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Experienced professionals line up for startup firms

By Zoya Anna Thomas | Wednesday, 20 May 2009, 02:14 Hrs | 10 Comments

Experienced professionals line up for startup firms

Bangalore: It's a win-win situation for both software engineers and startup companies. While startup companies are looking to hire experienced and skilled professionals, software engineers are making a beeline to join startups. Given the current economic situation in the country and the subsequently low recruitment and layoffs by established companies, a large pool of professionals is available in the market. So what attracts these professionals to startup companies?

Srikanth M, a software engineer at Vensys Software Solutions and previous employee of Wipro says, "Currently there are a lot of job opportunities in startup companies. Also at a startup company it is a totally different experience as you get to learn a lot more." Ashok Babu Gopireddy, also a software engineer, currently unemployed agrees. "The work will be more challenging in a startup, the scope to learn being larger. It will be a new experience altogether and you will get to develop your skills from the beginning", says Gopireddy.

Startup companies find it beneficial to hire these professionals, for various reasons. Experience is certainly a major advantage. Prashant Honnavar, the HR head at Nextbit Computing, a company that develops intellectual property and solutions for data enabled consumer electronics and handheld devices, says, "It is beneficial to the startup company if it hires people with experience of two to five years. Due to the slowdown, a lot of experienced workers are available these days and it makes sense to take advantage of the situation and hire these professionals."

The other reason given by companies to hire experienced workers is, to cut down on training costs. Kumar Ritesh, CEO of GSEC1, a company that provides innovative solutions for the entertainment industry says, "When you hire freshers, you have to spend on training. This is not only costly, but also time consuming. Thus we prefer the experienced pool of professionals."

More and more professionals are thus looking at startups for a new experience and as a learning platform. The fact that startups are keen to hire them makes it an added advantage for these professionals. In a startup, an employee gets an all-round experience, from engineering to management. Also it will take less time to climb up the ladder.

Consultancy firms feel that there is a strong motivation for professionals to move into startups in the current scenario. Srikrishna S Murthy, founding member of Longhouse Consulting, which is at present doing a study on 'the process that startups go through, while hiring senior professionals' says, "There are very few professionals who don't want to consider a startup now. One of the reasons is that, whereas growth in a MNC can be stagnant, it has better scope in a startup. However the shift is mainly of tier two and tier three employees. This can largely be attributed to the current layoffs."

The question is what is software industry body Nasscom doing to ensure that startups get the right talent? The answer is: not much. An official of Nasscom promoted India Innovation Fund says, "At this point of time, we aren't doing anything specific to ensure the right talent for startups, as we feel that there are more pressing needs like funding and mentoring that need to be addressed. Besides getting the right talent for startups is something that market forces are now taking care of and dosnt need intervention."

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Reader's comments(10)

1: I am sure no startup would go in forhiring the wrong kind of talent as it would have a telling effect on their performance.NASSCOM shouls very rightly now concentrate on job creation and job retention.

Posted by:tina - 21 May, 2009

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2: The startups do get a real boost with this trained and experienced professionals.The savings on the training is quite large.Level of competence would need to be closely monitored assuming that a good percentage would have been laid off from their earlier organisations based on their performance in relations to the others in the organisation

Posted by:ajith - 20 May, 2009

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3: Well at least there are startups to take care of the unemployed professionals in this country. Otherwise recession would have hit them worse

Posted by:Tasha - 20 May, 2009

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Yes, i being in Human Resources, i would definitely like to give an opportunity to the unemployed or laid off candidate, at the same time well deserving.

i also see to it that the employee hired also contributes to the growth of the start up and grow professionally which would not happen in the well established MNC's where the politics exits to the core

prashant Replied to: Tasha - 20 May, 2009

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Thats true. I have seen so called 'Big' company laying off a good technical resource and retain a fat manager who is good for nothing. Core technical people generally doesn't do boot licking of these managers and HR thats why they have been treated with red eyes in these stupid companies.

P H Replied to: prashant - 21 May, 2009

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mr. prashant never say that mnc will have politics, only start up companies will have politics, where dump persons want to show their skills to MD of the company by simply playing politics and became the team leader of their department. Remember highly technical person will always think technically,

raj Replied to: prashant - 20 May, 2009

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what is ur email id Prashant

Mini Replied to: prashant - 20 May, 2009

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That's great prashant, good to hear this. well deserving candidates should be employed. Its not fair to the employees when companies give the pink slip to cost cuts.

hamir Replied to: prashant - 20 May, 2009

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cut costs i mean

hamir Replied to: hamir - 20 May, 2009

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10:

so the freshers need to be remained unemployed-Jobless.unacceptable

kishore Replied to: hamir - 21 May, 2009

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