Friday, October 12, 2007

India, career hub for young expats

After middle and senior level foreigners making it to India young professionals who are at the beginning of their career to flock to the country, whose work environment throws them a huge challenge, both professional as well as personal.

The gist of the article:

- around 20,000 to 30,000 expatriates are believed to be working in India.A popular Indian jobsite has over 110,000 profiles of foreigners job seekers registered on the site indicating the (high) level of interest in India.


-Foreigners come to India from South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Continental Europe and America among other countries for not just the openings in the IT and ITeS sector-but also the emerging industries such as retail, hospitality, manufacturing, analytics, infrastructure, and pharma.

A couple of my clients have been hiring East Europeans and have actually found them to be more career conscious and feel their loyalty is higher. Considering the high attrition -at times due to misguided aspirations of the Indian youth, some of the employers have preferred to employ referrals of these expats-as their longetivity seems more assured!

With increasing globalisation, and use of web 2.0 tools, oflate I have noticed an increased interest in the "Indian magic"-notwithstanding the difference in culture, and perhaps the lack of a structured framework as yet- to enable the smooth transition.

The challenge for the HR fraternity is to proactively address the sensitivities involved in hiring and engaging such employees -not just on the basis of the hygiene factors like money, and look at softer issues as career growth, future, security-while also giving enough freedom for the professional to perform at the optimum level.

Personally, I am very convinced, the next decade with see a lot of global migration of professionals, and those with multicultural and multinational exposure -are the ones to watch out for. You can be sure these expats-would be ambassadors for Indian companies in time to come..as more Indian MNCs go global!


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