Blog: Indian recruitment ecosystem: The white spaces

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Indian recruitment ecosystem: The white spaces

The author looks at the Indian recruitment ecosystem and compares it with the North American counterpart. Read on to know more.
Indian recruitment ecosystem: The white spaces

In this blog post, I look to compare this North American recruitment ecosystem map to Indian companies, with an attempt to identify potential white spaces for Indian recruitment tech service providers. 

National general sourcing solutions 

We have players like Naukri, Shine, Monster, Timesjobs, Indeed, Quikr and IIMJobs who occupy this space and are very commonly recognized for giving access to profiles of thousands of potential candidates. LinkedIn also appears here with their solutions however one can argue that adoption of LinkedIn across the various industries and smaller companies is not as high as some of the traditional job boards. 

National and regional niche – Sourcing solutions

This is a developing or emerging niche in the Indian recruitment tech market. Currently, we see Venturesity, HackerRank and HackerEarth focusing on technology company specific hiring related challenges thus signalling the emergence of this category in India. Companies like Freshersworld, Letsintern, Internshala are some examples of targeting a specific niche to gain momentum in this crowded market. But we are yet not looking at regional sourcing options. 

Babajob is an example where they hope to connect the entry level job profiles with right opportunities. 

I reckon that the existing job board companies are likely to sharpen their offerings in this space and with the advent of mobile technology can offer a very hyper-local sourcing experience to companies and candidates. Companies looking to create such industry specific niche solutions, however, will have to go just beyond the generic job board solutions and will have to create some real value for the industry talent sourcing needs. Companies who can also provide technology solutions for part-time and contractual workers including daily wage laborers could gain a lot of traction and momentum here. 

Social sourcing

Most recruitment technology solution providers like Talview, Belong.co, CareerBuilder, TalentNow, Oracle, SAP, Ramco, Adrenalin, Peopleworks, Darwinbox and many other application tracking solutions (ATS) providers now offer an integrated social sourcing tool or experience. Thus in my view, this category is not exciting enough for a point solution to occupy unless it comes with some very specific benefits which are hard to create in today’s commoditized social media world.  Zwayam is one company which offers an interesting point solution in this space for companies looking to scale their sourcing efforts across multiple platforms without any heavy investment in technology. 

Professional career networks 

In the North American market apart from these two companies, there are about a dozen other companies which offer professional networking which is focused on specific industry or geography. Are you also wondering what’s stopping that from happening in the Indian context? 

Other categories

Of the other categories which are aggregators, job advertising distribution, resume harvesting, and career fairs, I reckon that from an Indian market context the category of career fairs will hold a lot more promise. 

Today this part of the sourcing and recruitment process is largely held without any technology backbone. Typically the generic job boards organize such career fairs and invite various companies – typically from a particular industry type – to participate. The need for innovation and use of technology in this part of the sourcing process is very high. HR Tech solution that solves problems of all stakeholders namely job seekers, job boards, and companies will stand to win in this space. 

CoCubes solved this problem specifically for fresh engineering graduate hiring and has seen steady growth and an acquisition. Can we really see a platform emerge which takes data from a job board, takes the job post from a company website or career page and then helps the recruiter conduct a virtual career fair online complete with assessment and video interviewing including online proctoring? I guess, the basic components exist, and some companies are in a great position to augment their current offerings via this solution. 

Resume harvesting is an interesting feature here which allows companies to silently keep sourcing candidates from all different sources and keep those candidates engaged so that when the right opportunity is available the recruiter is able to access this curated list of candidates. Companies like Talview, Belong.co are currently offering this as part of their solutions and we reckon this would soon become a staple offering in most ATS solutions. 

Of the other categories, we are likely to see more action in the recruitment ad agency space with TMP worldwide making an entry in the India market we expect more and more global players to focus on this particular area. In the Indian context, this will clearly be investments that large organizations will do in building their employer brand and creating a seamless experience for their potential employees. In an increasingly competitive market building, a unique employer brand is critical. Are we likely to see an emergence of an HR Technology solution which targets mid-market companies specifically for employer brand building and execution? 

RPO, testing and assessment, reference checking, background verification are other categories where we already see a lot of action in the Indian market. With the recent majority stake acquisition by PE fund in Peoplestrong, I believe the RPO market will continue to get momentum, especially in the midsized companies. I reckon many mid-size organizations will look at RPO backed with technology solution as a viable option. 

The biggest category which is missing here in terms of point solution or feature is recruitment analytics. We already see a lot of action in India in this area and companies like CareerBuilder, Spire, Edge Networks are doing some interesting work in this space. 

Overall we see that the Indian recruitment tech landscape seems to be in line with their North American counterparts. Given peculiar challenges faced by Indian businesses with respect to recruitment and selection, expect this space to continue to evolve, innovate, and attract attention more than any other HR technology vertical.

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Topics: Technology, Recruitment, Strategic HR, Talent Acquisition

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