Job seekers at Infocom 2005 in Calcutta on Saturday. Picture by Rashbehari Das

Calcutta, Dec. 10: Reach the spot with your CV, choose the job you want, appear for an interview and get recruited — all within the span of a few hours. That’s how easy getting a job could be for those looking for placements in IT and ITeS sectors at Jobs Mart at Infocom 2005 organised by Nasscom and Businessworld, an ABP group publication.

The first day of the two-day Jobs Mart saw a footfall of over 2,500 at the pavilion in the Salt Lake stadium and “around 100” were hired by IBM, ICICI OneSource, Global Vantedge and Tata Consultancy Services.

Compared with last year, the group of job seekers at Jobs Mart this time around is a more focused one, say recruiters and organisers alike.

“We met around 600 people today and the quality is much better than last year,” said Pramod Pachisia, chief operating officer of recruitment and staffing company 2Coms.

ICICI OneSource recruited for its Mumbai, Calcutta and Bangalore offices for voice and non-voice processes. “The response at Jobs Mart has been phenomenal. We had a huge number of walk-ins,” said Navneet Prasad, assistant manager (HR) of ICICI OneSource.

The pre-show preparations have helped, feel organisers. “On December 7 and 8, the recruiters made hour-long presentations to the candidates. As a result, those who came in for interviews today were clear about what they were looking for,” said a spokesperson for Jobs Mart.

Agreed Shefali Bajaj of Global Vantedge, a call-centre company, which selected around 10 candidates out of the 120-odd who signed up for a position: “The interactive sessions really helped screen and prepare the candidates. The facilities provided by the organisers were also very good.”

If the recruiters were happy with the walk-in opportunities, those getting hired were ecstatic with the super-quick process.

“It feels really great,” gushed Somnath Sarkar, a hotel management graduate who received the first offer of the day today, from GE.

A throng at The Telegraph Jobs Mart stall at the Infocom 2004 exhibition. Picture by Rashbehari Das

Calcutta, Dec. 4: If you’ve got technical training and good communication skills to boot, opportunities seem to be knocking on the door. For, some of the most well-known companies in the IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) sectors are recruiting the right people, on the spot, at The Telegraph Jobs Mart, as part of the Infocom 2004 exhibition.

On the fourth and penultimate day of the event, presented by Nasscom and Businessworld, an ABP group publication, companies were itching to sign up Calcutta’s best. And there were no limits on numbers.

“We are quite happy with the number of people who have turned up. Most of them have very good technical skills and good degrees. We have given some offers today and will continue to do so tomorrow,” said Pramod Pachisia of 2Coms, a recruiting and staffing company hiring for Wipro Spectramind’s Calcutta centre.

Day one at the jobs mart saw over 5,000 people pouring in from 10 am to 6 pm, to get started — or ahead — in their careers and find out about the prospects. Doing the recruiting were American Express, Wipro Spectramind, EXL Service, ICICI OneSource and GECS, while TCS and Birla Soft took CVs and counsellors at The Telegraph Jobs stall helped out with advice.

But beware, self-assessment is essential before queuing up. A common complaint from recruiters was that although Calcutta candidates excelled in technical education and training, communication skills didn’t quite match up. So, while Wipro, American Express, EXL and GE were hoping to recruit large numbers, Saturday proved a bit of a let down.

American Express had signed up two potential employees, and EXL, nine. Although TCS had around 300 CVs dropped into the box, Suvra Banerjee, of human resources, felt that not too many were quality candidates, because “the level of awareness is poor”. A spokesperson from American Express added that “quite a few were not even sure of the difference between IT and ITES”.

Sometimes, however, over-qualification was an issue, with B.Tech, M.Tech, Oracle and other courses done and dusted. “We’re not sure whether to recruit such people or not, because we would be doing them an injustice by offering call centre jobs,” said Amjad Auzam of ICICI.

Asim Handa, assistant vice-president, talent search, EXL, pointed out that it was in the “voice processes” area that Calcutta lacked. “That’s one aspect of the BPO industry. The people who have been coming in are mostly good technically, which is a requirement for software development.”

Unless the communication skills are adequate, a person would not be right for a call centre job, explained Chirodeep Sen of GE Capital, which is where Calcutta students were losing out. Rahul Kapoor from Birla Soft added that minimum competence in communication is needed even for a software development job, since “some client interaction is necessary”.

The mad rush all day was concentrated at The Telegraph Jobs counselling centre. “Most of them are students, wanting to know what their skills are and what careers would be best suited for them,” said Mala Mukherjee, senior counsellor, Institute for Career Studies.

“We have been giving them a short test and then talking to them. Usually, there are two categories — those good technically but not management-wise and the others with good technical and management skills. The second group would do well in BPO jobs, on the fast track up,” she summed up.

Now job info in your hands, courtesy Hutch

Our Bureau

Kolkata , Jan. 25

DETAILS of select jobs will now be on your mobile, thanks to a job search that Hutchison Telecom East has started offering.

Hutch on Wednesday launched the service in association with 2COMS Consulting, a recruitment company based in Kolkata that will provide the content to both paid and post-paid customers.

The telecom service provider plans to provide the basic particulars of openings in sectors such as banking, IT and telecom. The service will be available to subscribers across Kolkata, Bengal and Sikkim. "We will only provide the information. Subscribers will have the option of applying for the jobs on their mobile," said Mr S. Murali, V-P - Sales & Marketing, Hutchison Telecom East, adding that the service is a first of sorts in the country.

For searching, a caller will have to say "jobs" after dialling 123. The menu will consist of several industry categories, one of which must be singled out by the caller. The list of jobs under that category will then be announced. He or she may then say "apply" for applying for the job, after which a verbal confirmation will be received by the caller.

"The idea is to provide subscribers, that is, those with the right qualifications, the maximum opportunity for career growth," Mr Murali told newspersons. The telecom company and 2COMS Consulting have worked out a specific business relationship.

The city’s BPO industry is fast catching up with its more successful cousins

Times of India, Kolkatta
10th June 2005

The city’s BPO industry is fast catching up with its more successful cousins, even on the pay front. It may not be long before an employee of the BPO industry here may start drawing the same salary as his counterparts in the traditional growth centres such as Gurgaon. Placement consultants forecast that with companies grappling with a staff shortage to handle critical projects and attrition levels in the National Capital Region scaling a new high every day, ITeS firms in future will be forced to offer salaries that are location-insensitive.

While they are unwilling to pin this across-the-board development to a specific date, they do point out that some BPO firms have already started doing this to attract the best talent at the newer centres where these companies are planning to build a presence. Software development firms, incidentally, pay roughly similar salaries irrespective of location. “Paucity of trained manpower has led to BPO companies run nationwide recruitment drives. This has resulted in softening salary differences between locations as companies try to attract candidates from mature locations and ‘Tier-I cities’ to adopt emerging destinations and ‘Tier-II’ cities by not compromising, and in some cases, enhancing compensation terms,” EmmayHR Services Pvt Ltd CEO Monisha Advani said. “We predict that employee cost arbitrage between different locations within India is likely to be eroded gradually or even completely in the near future,” added Advani, whose Mumbai-based outfit does a lot of placements in the BPO arena.

Pramod Pachisia, chief operating manager at the city-based 2Coms, agreed with Advani’s reasoning. “With greater competition, companies in Kolkata will also have to start paying salaries that can be bench-marked against what is being offered in Gurgaon or Bangalore in order to retain their brightest employees,” Pachisia pointed out.

A host of BPO giants — including GE Capital International Services and HSBC Electronic Data Processing India — have lined up massive expansion plans for Kolkata over the next few months that will increase job opportunities manifold. Average starting salaries of call centre executives in Kolkata are currently much lower than those in Gurgaon or Bangalore. According to Pachisia, it presently hovers around Rs 7,000 per month here compared to Rs 8,000 in Gurgaon and Rs 10,000 in Bangalore. “Even average pay hikes in Kolkata’s ITeS sector are currently lower than that in the National Capital Region,” pointed out a consultant with a national search agency.

Average salary increases yearon-year at mature ITeS centres range between 17-30%, while in Kolkata it is still a modest 10-20% despite the base being smaller. Suresh Menon, chief operating officer at the local BNKeSolutions, however, said companies here had taken the hint that they needed to bring payscales on par. “Salary increases this year have reflected the changed mindset.”

ICICI’s BPO arm goes on a hiring spree in Kolkata

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2006 01:50:04 AM]

KOLKATA: After Wipro and IBM, one of the biggest recruiters on the city’s BPO street is tipped to be ICICI OneSource. Though the official launch of its Kolkata BPO unit is unlikely to happen before June, ICICI OneSource has silently started hiring ITeS professionals in batches for entry-level jobs.

While several head-hunting firms are likely to be involved in the exercise, ICICI OneSource has just given the initial recruitment mandate for its Kolkata BPO facility to 2COMS Consulting, a city-based staffing firm.

“We’ve recently bagged the recruitment mandate from ICICI OneSource for its upcoming Kolkata BPO facility. 2COMS will initially hire back-office executives/associates for entry-level placements at ICICI OneSource. We’ve already completed recruitment of two batches, aggregating some 100 professionals,” a top source at 2COMS Consulting told ET.