Back after a breather...

Habits form easily.

Just as 'doing something' becomes a habit, it is surprising how 'not doing' also can get addictive! My last posting on the blog was almost 3 weeks ago..and there were a series of events that happened to take up my personal time, and even as I was realising I must post something meaningful, pressure mounting on me, it was really a revelation that quite a few well wishers started calling me to check if everything was alright :-)!

So here is an attempt to shake off the inertia and get back into the blogging mode.

Ah yes, one of my pals wanted me to highlight (especially for those who read my posts on the reader), that I have been posting some of the plum -not so confidential pick of the jobs that I have been working on. Actually I had included a widget on this blog, which would surely enlighten those readers who log on, about the typical and almost generic kinds of opportunities that me, and a few associates of mine, handle!

The period also saw me evaluating quite a few 'applicant tracking systems' to enable a better online resume management solution-and improve my firm's efficiencies. It is really shocking to note that there is indeed, a very few choices -in India, of state-of -art technologies for this recruiting domain- which is indeed booming, and attracting a whole new generation of tech savvy professionals- and most of whom are owner managed- with less than 50 employees.

Especially when it is increasingly becoming difficult to get the 'right people', and technology can help in automating some of the mundane tasks, and help improve productivity, I was really intrigued that we didnt have too many "Indian " focussed products for the SME market. Am sure there is a great market for a decently priced product -and more so, if introduced on a subscription based model for a profession that gets rewarded on success mostly. Zoniac, Cbiz, Resumer Opus, Hirecraft, 3i's Veda are some of the more prominent players, and Taleo is threatening to come in..So hopefully things will change in future.

Perhaps it also had to do with my mother being hospitalised last week, but spending long hours thinking about the medical profession and its impact -over time, I couldnt but resist crystal gazing into the future of the recruitment industry, and the career paths for a recruiter!

To me, a recruiter today is 'the family doctor ' who existed in India, about 3 decades ago. No matter what the illness, we had a doctor uncle or aunt, who was very familiar with the family, the lifestyle, the generic diseases they suffered from -and so often even talked us out of being sick, just being around!!

Then came the age of specialist docs, who began by setting up a nursing home in the neighbourhood- having a polyclinic inviting some of the other colleagues to complement the skills and treat 'out patients'- but soon ran into problems relating to 'technological obsolescence' and infrastructure bandwidth. Ofcourse, the 21st century has seen the growth of corporate hospitals, and keeping in sync with the outsourcing theme-even medical tourism and telemedicine are growing by leaps and bounds.

Are we going to see a similar evolution in the transformation of the recruiter?

Traditionally, we had recruiters expanding by having multiple locations across the country.In the Indian recruitment world, we have seen the biggies eg ABC, MaFoi, Peopleone- have all gone to become ' global corporates' by being part of world wide firms-there are a whole lot of others being wooed by VC firms and PE firms with a lot of passion-and a lot of tier 2 and tier3 firms thinking of forming alliances to stay abreast/ get to the next level & continue to add value!

I am tempted to draw parallels from the consulting, accounting, or legal firms -which have been part of a more matured industries...and predict, there is room for a lot of worldwide networks of small recruiter firms..who would retain their own personal identity, strength of their networking and relationship management skills, and have the 'localised' yet 'personalised human touch' that manage 'intimate aspirations of career growth'-which no software or large firm can replace!!

Technology has been helping compress time, distance, efficiencies and to use a ciche'- geography is becoming history!!

And as Google announced Open Social earlier this fortnight, I am left wondering whether all the jobsites today -will become a la classified advertisements, and the world will be taken over by applications that leverage on interpersonal networks!

Are we ready for the change?