Sensible recruitment in the time of recession

BANGALORE, INDIA: Imagine a company that handpicks prospective employees for your company across all the big and small educational institutions across the country, conducts tests based on your requirements, does in-house training, if you wish to, and goes a step further to analyze the current workforce and streamline them better.

Bangalore-based Professional Aptitude Council (PAC) offers these services to MNCs as well as select domestic companies in the IT sector.

Cybermedia News caught up with Naveen M, Managing Director - India and Guhesh Ramanathan, Strategic Advisor, PAC.

"There are two interesting trends we have observed in recent times. One, the level of talent that prevails in education institutions across B and C lass cities is often at par, and sometimes better than, those pass out of the IITs and IIMs,” he said.

“PAC has embarked on a mission to unearth this talent and give them an opportunity to work with leading enterprises. Also, the attrition rate of employees who hail from these not-so-popular towns is minimal. The second phenomenon is that the cost of employment is relatively lower for individuals from these cities since students from top universities are spoilt for choice in most cases."

Speaking on the mechanics of testing and analyzing individuals, Guhesh said, "Most companies today look for high levels of interactivity and team work, which translates to either identifying individuals who have the relevant traits or grooming them.”

He said PAC has created tests in house which measure these parameters as a starting step after which online tests are conducted depending on customer requirements.

“All our tests are benchmarked against global standards ensuring that the ratings are at par with any individual who has applied for the same job role from anywhere else in the world."

Taking the effort of finding talent from smaller cities, PAC has started an initiative called the Bright Sparks Program, a free platform for institutions and individuals to reach out to their dream employers.

So far, around 1250 campuses have participated in the programme and 50,000 tests have been administered.

The slowdown has encouraged PAC to increase this numbers besides strengthening its expertise in analysing the current workforce and restructuring the same to be yield better business benefits.