8 �THE ECONOMIC TIMES | NEW DELHI | TUESDAY | 26 APRIL 2016Careers: The Fast Track
WAYS TO
Having to deal with an overly control-ling boss is a common peeve. Some-one who doesn’t trust your profes-sional strengths can be frustrating and even demotivating. If you have a boss who pays too much attention to the minutest of tasks, demands progress reports too frequently or even ques-tions the number of breaks you take, you have a micromanager on your hands. Brinda Dasgupta brings you some tips from experts.
4 Demonstrate SincerityBe sure to show yourself as an employee who does not require mi-cromanagement — best done by following processes and respecting protocol. “Be hands on with tasks, jot down activities in your diary, work email and mobile phone - these will cement your tag as a dedi-cated team member,” said RP Yadav, CMD, Genius Consultants.
5 Give FeedbackDon’t let yourself be micromanaged till you reach a breaking point and feel like you want to quit your job. Gather up some courage and speak to your boss, taking care to frame your points well. “Have a positive attitude, and offer reassurance that you can do the work without being constantly supervised,” said Mishra.
Deal With a MicromanagingBoss
3 Be Clear About Your Deliverables A common cause for a boss micromanaging team members is the fear of not getting the right amount of work done, that projects may be delayed, or that the quality is not up to mark. “Be very clear on what your boss expects from you, to ensure that there is no discrep-ancy with what you consider your deliverables,” said Padmanabhan.
Show Empathy1Understand the context your manager is operating in—he or she may be under pressure from superiors, causing a tendency to micromanage your work. “Soothe irritation and frustration and try to understand what your boss is going through. Keep communication lines open and don’t judge too harshly. Instead, view the situation through a lens of em-pathy,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services.
Give Frequent Updates2Your boss is constantly checking on you and the progress of the project because of a fear that you won’t be able to deliver. “Alleviate these concerns by giving frequent updates,” said Murali Padmanab-han, senior vice president - HR, talent management head India, Vir-tusaPolaris. “Talk regularly about your daily tasks, and apprise him or her about the progress. This will build trust in you and show you are more than capable of delivering outcomes.”
New Delhi: Indian Instituteof Management, Calcutta haswon the European Founda-tion for Management Develop-ment Quality ImprovementSystem or EQUIS accredita-tion. It is the first businessschool in India to be accredi-ted by all three major accredi-tation agencies in the world.
EQUIS board voted to conferaccreditation on IIM Calcuttaon April 12. IIMC already hadaccreditation from The Ad-vance Collegiate Schools ofBusiness (AACSB), Floridaand the London-based Associ-ation of MBAs or AMBA.
“Triple crown accreditationhas put us on a different level
internationally. We expect tofare better in not only globalrankings but also as a strongcontender for attracting glo-bal talent,” IIMC director Sai-
bal Chattopad-hyay told ET.
Only fiveother B-schoolsin Asia and 73in the world aretriple accredi-ted. The UK hasthe highestnumber of tri-ple accreditedB-schools, atabout 20. IIMC
is also the only Indian mem-ber of CEMS, a grouping of 30premier global business scho-ols that offer the Masters inManagement programme.
IIMC Wins EQUIS Accreditation; FirstB-school in India to Bag ‘Triple Crown’
Only 5 otherB-schools inAsia and 73globally are tripleaccredited
New Delhi: Away from regulators, anew industry has risen to make ban-king easier for customers. And, thissunrise sector — financial technolo-gy, or fintech — is attracting hoardsof top talent from across industries.
Last week, Flipkart made two high-profile hires for its fintech business,while, in the recent months, Paytmroped in PwC’s Shinjini Kumar to bechief executive of its yet-to-launchpayments bank. It also named Krish-na Hegde, a top executive of Barcla-ys, to head the company’s consumerinvestment products division for thepayments bank and Vipin Surelia, aformer deputy general manager atReserve Bank of India, to its leaders-hip team. Globally, Anshu Jain, De-utsche Bank’s former co-CEO, is saidto be joining US company SoFi.
Bengaluru-based Scripbox CEOAshok Kumar has come from Cisco.Arjun Ramnath, senior product ma-nager, previously held the same posi-tion at LinkedIn, California.
Fintech is an umbrella term that co-vers technology-based companiesoperating in insurance, payment, as-set management, etc. With it trans-forming banking business as weknow it and disrupting mammothbanks, headhunters see a greatershift of talent towards it. “Financetechnology is a booming segment inIndia with the opening of numerousmobile wallet companies, non-ban-
king financing companies and nowpayments banks — all running on ro-bust digital platforms,” said AG Rao,group managing director of Manpo-werGroup India. The segment is ge-nerating a lot of new jobs, most clus-tered around mobile, user experien-ce and financial analysis, he said.
In Scripbox with 80 employees, av-erage age is 27 and average leaders-hip age is 34. For both Kumar andRamnath, motivation to move frombig name firms to a fintech startupwas simple: similarities betweenthem and the startup’s founders.
lume customers, the likes of Mobik-wik, Capital Float, MSwipe, CitrusPay and Ezetap have raised $150 mil-lion-plus in India. For young employ-ees, they come with a promise ofstock options and open work culture.
“Considering this is a newly evol-ved industry, it will see at least a 20%increase in hiring due to new e-wal-lets and payments banks. It will bedue to large scale of business (ecom-merce) and financials going online,"explained Ajay Shah, assistant vicepresident at Teamlease Services.
Meanwhile, BFSI sector is alsostepping up recruitment of highlytalented IT professionals, especiallythose with an understanding of fi-nance. “It is to be seen is whether theBFSI sector will acqui-hire FinTechfirms or will the ‘new kids on theblock’ swallow up the BFSI incum-bents,” said Vivek Madhukar, chiefoperating officer at TimesJobs.com.
For BFSI companies that have beenpracticing traditional ways of physi-cal banking, fintech will give accessto 300 million new customers (Inter-net and smartphone users). “Earlier,something as basic as booking a taxiwould involve cash transactions andeven that’s completely moving onlinevia products like mobile wallets,” saidAlka Dingra, assistant general mana-ger, Teamlease Services.
BFSI VS FINTECHTalent drain is a very real problemfor BFSI sector to fintech domain,and it is only going to increase in the
coming months, Rao of ManPower-Group said. “Companies are statingthe fact that they go head-to-headwhen it comes to technology talent.”
There is no doubt investmentbanks and fintech companies arelocked in a war for the best technolo-gy talent, desperate to invest in IT tokeep up with the digital revolution.In this sense, technology is impres-sively advanced in financial servi-ces, which are both an opportunityand a threat for banks," he added.
YOUNG EMPLOYEESToday, over half the employers loo-king to hire want employees withjust two years of work experience,shows a data point from TimesJobs.
MasterCard, a traditional financi-al services company that managesglobal payments, says 80% of its cur-rent workforce in India is millenni-al. "There's a big technology story inIndia, we're creating a diverse orga-nisational culture world over with40% millennials in our workforce.But in India, that figure is double aswe are hiring many more individu-als in their early careers,” chief ta-lent officer David Deacon told ET.
FUTURE OF FINTECHIn India, fintech is synonymous withjust payment technology, even as the-re are 11lending fintech unicorns glo-bally. The sector is expected to ex-pand here as well, say experts, cove-ring hitherto untapped areas such aslending and personal finance.
WHY FINTECH?With more than 117 million Indiansusing smartphones and over 160 mil-lion connected to the Internet, a lar-ge number of companies have beencoming up with products to assistcustomers. A lot of that is happeningin financial sector where technologyis developing at a rapid rate, disrup-ting traditional banking. Industryexperts predict that professionalswith deep domain and design know-ledge will be in great demand.
Premised on low-cost, high-tech mo-dels to deal with low-value, high-vo-
Fintech Sector Proving to Be Talent Magnet MEN AT WORK
TOP FUNCTIONAL AREA
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COS HIRING IN INDIA:IT players
∙Fiserv India
∙KPMG India
∙Banks∙UBS
∙Citibank India
∙Startups
∙Faircent
∙WRS Info India Pvt Ltd
∙Karza
Technologies
∙Trumoney
∙Fintech Stealth
∙Impact Guru
∙Stealth Mode Fintech Startup
∙Trupay
∙Capsurge
Financial technology is disrupting the traditional way of banking and leading to a considerable talent drain from BFSI sector
Sreeradha D Basu & Devina Sengupta
Mumbai: Startups in India are nolonger rushing to splurge up to$700,000 a year on executives fromabroad. The number of such offershas dried up as much as 60-70% inthe past few months, according toheadhunters, who said the drive tocontain costs has forced startups torely mainly on local talent for fillingsenior positions. The cutback hasbeen the sharpest at bigger firmssuch as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Zo-mato, headhunters said. ET spoke to more than eight hiring
firms including RGF Executive Se-arch, Longhouse Consulting, EMAPartners, Transearch, The HeadHunters, Michael Page India, Heid-rick & Struggles and Basil Advisors.
“A company that would hire seven-eight (executives) from abroad hasslashed its hiring to two-three at themost,” said Anshuman Das, mana-ging partner of search firm Long-house Consulting, which speciali-ses in e-commerce recruitment.
Gone are the days, Das said, whenbigger e-commerce players wouldhire even vice presidents for .̀1-1.5crore plus stock options that wouldbe worth another .̀1crore a year.
“There was a lot of noise on e-com-merce companies hiring from abro-ad and though not all were success-ful, at least they were entertained.Now even for that entertainmentthere is no money,” he said.
The shift is also because investorswant companies to focus on uniteconomics and not products as wasthe case earlier. Therefore, demandfor technology specialists has comedown, recruiters said. “A couple ofyears ago, one expected e-commercein India to grow the same way that itdid in the West. Firms hired thosewho have been part of the growth inthe West. However, that growth didnot happen in India and thereforethe global recruitments had to bestopped,” said Vinod Murali, mana-ging director of InnoVen Capital In-dia, a venture capital debt fund.
At another executive search firm,The Head Hunters, CEO KrisLakshmikanth, who was makingthree trips to the US till last year torecruit talent, said firms have clam-ped down on such hiring. “The odd
at $5-6 million annual packages.Punit Soni, chief product officer of
Flipkart quit earlier this month. Pe-eyush Ranjan and Saikiran Krish-namurthy, two other high-profileexecutives recruited from abroadstill with Flipkart and have been as-signed additional responsibilities.
Flipkart declined to comment onemailed queries from ET.
The shift has led to grooming ofmore local executives who can takeup senior posts. In case of recruit-ments from abroad, employers arenow looking at people with lower ex-perience levels and therefore lowersalaries as well. Nilay Khandelwal,regional director at Michael PageIndia said the younger startups ande-commerce firms still prefer theirtop candidates from the Bay Areabut are now increasingly hiring on
contracts which can be renewed atthe employer’s discretion.
There are reports of job cuts, re-sulting from the rapid automationbeing introduced at leading star-tups to handle routine tasks. In thebackdrop of this slump, big-ticketrecruitments are being avoided.
Basil Advisors’ founder PrateekSrivastava said hiring decisions arebeing deferred and time taken to clo-se a hire stretched. In a few cases, hesaid, executives from abroad havebeen hired on contracts stipulatinga certain number of hours per we-ek, where they are allowed to workfor other employers as well.
Geetika Mehta, director-humanresources at Urban Ladder said,“We hire candidates based on fit-ment of skill sets from a role andculture perspective. In the last fewmonths, we have not seen any talentfrom global markets relevant for us.However, a number of employees inour tech team are from Bay area.”
Employee costs at leading startupsaccount for about 35% of overallcash burn rates, say industry ana-lysts. Instead of enticing with mo-ney and growth, clients are now as-king the search firms to bring in on-ly those who are keen to return to In-dia anyway, said GC Jayaprakash,executive director at RGF ExecutiveSearch. Recently, when a potentialhire from the Silicon Valley said hewould think about relocating if theoffer was exciting enough, the com-pany told RGF to let go of the chase.
one that happens now, clients wantwithin $200,000. The best talent isway beyond the budgets in today’s e-commerce scenario,” he said.
Such executives were earlier hiredat highs of $600,000-700,000 and mo-re, including ESOPs. Earlier, Laksh-mikanth said, the founder of a big e-commerce firm would ask him toshortlist at least half a dozen candi-dates from Google and Amazon’s USoffices for his key team. Now suchdemands have dried up, he said.
Just a year ago, startups in Indiawere offering matching dollar sala-ries and fast-track career opportu-nities to lure talent from the SiliconValley. An ET story in 2015 had high-lighted how two of Google’s engine-ering vice-presidents–Peeyush Ran-jan and Punit Soni – relocated fromSan Francisco Bay Area to Flipkart
Thrifty Indian Startups Eye Local TalentEnd of Ecommerce Boom
Startups are scaling back
on search for global talent
Bigger cos such as Flipkart, Snapdeal are cutting back most
Headhunterssay offers are down 60-70%
as cos cut costs
Those hiring for senior roles, are looking for options in India
They are also open to get in people with less experience at lower cost
Alternative is global talent on a much tighter budget
This is compared to as much as
$600,000-700,000 earlier$ $
For international recruitments, there is more of contract hiring
“When the e-commerce fi rms started, they hired from abroad to show they were big, but now that will not happen”
Arun Das Mahapatra, partner in-charge of Heidrick & Struggles in India
Home is Best The days of extravagant offers for global talent are gone as cos come under pressure to tighten purse strings
