TeamLease to unleash mega job hunt in India

NEW DELHI: Riding on a boom in retail and manufacturing sectors, TeamLease, India’s largest staffing solutions firm, aims to add 40,000 more employees in its pool next year, up from the current year’s target of 52,000.

“We are also targeting a Rs 1,000-crore turnover in 2007 from the current figure of Rs 520 crore,” Ashok Reddy, managing director, TeamLease, told DNA.

Gearing up to tap a huge workforce from category B and category C towns of India, the company set up new offices in in Bhubaneshwar, Goa, Indore, Nashik, Vizag and Jaipur in the last four months.

“With 400 recruiters working all over the country to build a candidates’ pool and identify skill sets , we add about 5,500 people every month, of which about 2,500 get absorbed by the companies,” said Reddy.

He said that in the next five-six years there would be 10-12 million jobs through temping (temporary workers which the company offers its clients) .  In a country with a workforce of 400 million, only 1.8 lakh temp jobs are there in the organised sector.  As the HR sector grew in India, some major players like Manpower and Ma Foi went for mergers and acquisitions.

“We love our independence and by getting into mergers and acquisitions, we would kill our growth rate and value addition that we do now,” says

Reddy, dismissing the idea of any near-term mergers or acquisitions. The firm started with banking, financial services, insurance and entered BPO and telecom sectors, but is now busy evolving temp services in sectors like retail and manufacturing. 

There will be no dearth of temp jobs even for the undergrads, who are open to new ideas and easier to train. Companies like Reliance Retail will offer 5 lakh jobs in two years, once they roll out the retail operations, Reddy said.

Manufacturing is another sector which will give a quantum leap to temp jobs.  Earlier temping was being done for white collar jobs only, in the last six months, blue collar jobs are also being “temped”. This trend will catch up very fast, he said.

“By next year, we expect 10% of our associate volume to come from blue collar segment, which is set to grow further,” Reddy said.