Doing Business in India For Dummies®

Finding the Right Indian Employees

India offers a vast pool of quality manpower, but finding talent to suit your specific needs can be a little difficult if you don’t know where and how to look. Indians may be technically qualified for a position, but they may not have the particular skills that foreign business executives seek. They may also be used to very different work practices than those prevalent in the West. And even if you find people with the technical skills you require, you may need to explore whether they fit in with the work culture you want to build for your business in India.

Thanks to the booming economy on the one hand, and the struggle to provide training (see Chapter 12 for more information on that) on the other, you may find a serious shortage of skilled persons in some segments, while others are bursting at the seams with job seekers.

You may also discover that finding Indians to suit your requirements at the top levels is hard. Competitors in sectors like IT, marketing, and retailing snatch up experienced professionals, and the employee turnover in these fields is quite high. Always be watching out for attrition and have a forward hire plan with people waiting on the bench to complete deadline driven projects.

If you want to find the best candidates for the jobs you offer, consider adopting a number of different strategies. In this section, I detail those strategies and help you decide which ones make sense for your business.

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