College
placement coordinators in India, would have found a trend of startups signing
up, to participate in the college placement round up. Especially in cities like
Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi startups are not
hesitating a bit to try recruiting freshers from colleges in these cities. Is
it because startups suddenly got richer? Certainly not. It is because startups
found the secret sauce of bringing down levels of employee attrition in their
companies.
Bringing
down the levels of employee attrition is getting real with some startups.
Observations made over a few startup case studies revealed that these new firms
are getting smarter in sustaining their business by cutting recruitment costs.
So, what do they do?
Recruitment
formula of startups
What is
the reality behind startups choosing to hire students from engineering
colleges. Over the years, engineering colleges multiplied and also the number
of takers for their courses. In the meantime, technology startups have also
started making a visible presence in the market. The timing was just right for
engineering graduates because they don’t see the threat of unemployment.
Recruiters
started hunting for technical talent, with a conception that toppers would add
more value to the organization. But eventually these small brands keep such
talent and had to run multiple cycles of recruitment. They also could not find
enough the toppers who could fit their budget.
Then,
there was an Aha! moment when they found the next set students who could fit
their bill. After recruiting them, the startup owners realized that with some
training and direction the so called average students remained committed to
company and stayed longer than the toppers of the college. While the toppers
insisted higher salary and gave no guarantee about their stint with the firm,
the average students were found more promising in terms of loyalty to the
company and cost to company (CTC).
As time
passed, it was proved that engineering students with an average mark sheet
suited the small budgets and at the same time became loyal employees bringing
down the employee attrition rates and hence recruitment costs. Startups also
noted that when they run into a tight budget mode, they need to rise the exit
barriers for their employee keeping the hiring and retention costs low.
This
hiring trend spread like fire among startups which were stringent on
expenditure and which experienced high attrition rates in their organizations.
The problem found the solution by itself!
