A report titled Most Valued Professionals of India, released by HeadHonchos, points out that the demand for specialised talent is increasing.

A recent research released by HeadHonchos, a job search and career portal for senior executives, points out that specialised talent is drawing higher pay cheques than normal workers. The survey concurs that professionals in Venture Capital, Semiconductors and Management Consulting industries command the highest premium for management talent. The compensation that professionals in these industries draw is almost 30-60 per cent higher than professionals who work in other industries. According to HeadHonchos, these trends have been derived after analysis of data for close to half a million middle management and senior professionals with 6-35 years of experience across more than 70 industries. It isn't for the first time that the importance of specialized talent has been highlighted. Researches in the west also led to similar results. An article titled Specialized Labour in Demand on the website world-economic.com made similar assessment of the job industry. In the article, writer Daria Getmanova writes, “Despite gloomy forecasts predicting a continued rise in unemployment, people qualified for specialized jobs may be able to find decent work in foreign, English-speaking countries without much difficulty.” Getmanova’s inferences are based on inputs from recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

Uday Sodhi, CEO, HeadHonchos.com shares his point of view, “The trends are a reflection of the growth of knowledge industries like IT, Semiconductors, Finance and Business Services in the economy. In addition, in industries such as Oil & Gas or Power where talent is hard to come by, the shortage of specialised talent is driving up compensation packages. There is a soaring premium for exceptional talent and companies are prepared to pay. Professionals meeting the troika of RSQ (Risk, Scarcity and Qualification) are being rewarded the most.” Referring to these findings, it is safe to figure out a few trends that may be widely seen in hiring:

1. Specialised talent will top manpower demand: In her article Getmanova quotes Robert Dickey, the Head of the Technology Unit at the Randstandart recruitment agency as saying, “Software engineers, project managers, and other specialists are more in demand than some other professionals who don’t know how to deal with cloud technology.” While specialized jobs in technology might rise exponentially in years to come, in a way, this inference applies to many other industries also. With changing market demands and improvement in skills of employees in general, companies will need specialized talent to lead them to success.

2. Companies will have to train employees to suit their needs: A 2012 report titled ‘Why it is Difficult to Find and Recruit Top Talent’ conducted by recruiting agency Robert Half pointed out, “by 2020, the United states could have 1.5 million too few college educated workers.” Companies have already started taking some serious steps to boost their training methods and often concerns are raised about the ‘quality’ of college graduates. Most of the college graduates do not understand professional requirements and are deemed ‘unemployable’ by leading companies. In this scenario, companies ignoring training and development will do it at their own peril.

3. Specialised worker will draw more salaries: This is a point that would seldom be turned down. The HeadHonchos report indicates the existence, rather prevalence, of this fact. According to this report, not only IT is one of the highly paying industries, even within industry there is a clear hierarchy in terms of compensation. The report cites this example: Under the umbrella of the IT industry, there are clear differentials between those in specialised, talent-scarce areas like Semiconductors and in less specialised areas like Quality Assurance. Similar trends are seen in the BFSI industry with Private Equity and Investment Banking professionals receiving higher payouts in contrast to those employed in Retail Banking. In the future, every industry will see such trends.
Organisations seem to have understood that for them to succeed hiring a talent resource is not all, hiring the ‘right’ talent will make the difference.