BUSINESS TODAY

They haven't done the drill. They haven't spent their early-20s listening in rapt attention to some stern know-it-all droning on about the power of human resource (hr) mobilisation, and certainly don't think flaunting any such regimental badge of training has any bearing on their career. And yet, they continue to shake up the Indian business of talent scouting with their success.

Meet the young and energetic head-hunters who've made their way in from outside the hr stream, the few who are in their chosen field for a far more compelling reason: passion. A passion developed under the grown-up influence of worklife maturity. A passion for talent, and its use for maximum impact.

Uday Chawla, 40, Managing Partner at the search firm Heidrick & Struggles (H&S), was an entrepreneur for 10 years, having started a telecom firm, before moving to TMI India, the domestic arm of a Danish change management outfit. The experience gave him key insights into the telecom-software space. So, five years ago when he got the chance to be part of H&S' start-up team in India, it was something "no one in his right mind would say 'no' to", he laughs. "The industry is slowly maturing," he thinks, "and contrary to popular belief, hr is just one competency in a list of many others needed for the job." Apart from domain knowledge, he brings an understanding of work cultures, a wide network and specialised interviewing skills.

Unlike Chawla, Manisha Deva, 32, was quite cold to the idea of shifting to the search business at first. She was doing well at The Oberoi, Mumbai, looking after corporate marketing and financial services. But Korn Ferry pursued her diligently, and once she succumbed to the offer, she found herself suddenly excited and successful as a domain expert (financial services) in her new career. She brought her rolodex along, of course ("it would be suicide to lose the contact base"). The importance of being from the outside, she says, is that you know of "the movers and shakers in a particular domain".

At 29, Puneet Pratap Singh of Executive Access is proud of different things. Three things, in particular: not being from a premier B-school (he went to IIPM in Qutab Institutional Area, Delhi), not being an hr man (finance and marketing interested him more), and being "the youngest senior consultant in the industry". He was on the road 23-days-a-month selling Global Information Systems Technology's offerings in remote Himachal Pradesh, before he turned head-hunter. "People excite me," he found, and got an added kick from the prospect of interacting with many CEOs-and that too, on their career growth for a change.

To Singh, conventional hr is a bore. Where conventional hr people tend to be weak, he feels, is in business development, which is a highly competitive game. "This is not the place for non-performers who got lost and hope to find themselves as head-hunters," he quips. It's a challenge-one to do with business as much as people-involving some really fine judgements. Having played a role in some 100 switches over the past year, Singh is confident of having got into the heads of both the hunters and the hunted. "A career is like a game of chess," he philosophises, whilst talking about a particularly complex long-in-the-making deal, "to move a rook backwards is not losing the game."

Job dealings are never easy. "Sometimes clients need a gentle nudge," believes Azra Hameed of Gilbert Tweed India, "and somebody objective who they look at for leadership during delicate negotiations." Just a few years ago, she thought of head-hunters simply as people who recruit the "top Cs" for companies. A mother of two, she was an entrepreneur running (along with her husband) an information technology company. After 10 years of that, and then Boston Education and Software Technology, when she sought a fresh challenge in the same vertical it space, she found she could leverage her rolodex to win business for Gilbert Tweed. She currently has AOL, Accenture, GreenPoint and BankAm as clients.

As for the hr skills required, she's been picking up threads along the way. She's proud of the work she's done for discerning clients (such as Accenture), but she's equally candid about moments of embarrassment (such as when a candidate let her down at a crucial point).

"Disappointments can be avoided if you completely comprehend the candidate's motivations," says Sanjay Kapoor, Partner, Amrop International, "but, of course, everybody is shrewd and human." He is no hr man either, and the big value he brings to the business, as he says, is a well-developed sense of empathy, coming as he does from the same side as his candidates. The task, in his view, is to "connect with the candidate's aspirations". This takes skills of human touch and detection.

After a career in the banking and power sectors, Kapoor turned head-hunter 18 months ago. Why? To gain the fulfillment of "watching individuals grow".

A fresh entrant to a field often has the advantage of a distanced perspective. Conventional hr professionals, it may be argued, are creatures of conventional corporate hierarchy and all the internal intrigue that goes with it. If so, they are possibly less merit-attuned in matters of job candidacy than actual value-generators who're bothered about business results above all else.

That could leave hr professionals stung. Conventional hr is not all there is, argues Anil Segal, who has 16 years of hr experience working with ITC, Xerox and American Express, and describes himself as "temperamentally not an hr person". He is currently the chief of Proactive Consultants, a search firm based in Gurgaon, and believes that culture maintenance men often make lousy head-hunters. "Entrepreneurs or sales and marketing people," says Segal, perform best, "as they understand the importance of delivery."

But where does that leave hr as a discipline? Isn't recruitment a key performance area? Well, says Segal, it all depends on the man on top. "HRD is only as strong as the CEO makes it," says Segal, leaving no doubt where the real responsibility lies.

You stand up, they roll off their chairs in mirth. You pause...and then swish, turn your head round quick-to catch your own halo, and again, darn, in vain. They're in peals. Have the nerve, the bone, humerus fibia or whatever? Be a stand-up comedian. People would pay more than your weight in sliced bread to have you at private gatherings. According to Vir Das, who rakes it in tickling Delhi's social circuit, there's opportunity in "a wider variety of audience asking for comedy hours on the Idiot Box". But are you funny enough to crack big-time? Well, try the absurdity test: try your surroundings. The rewards? "When it rains, it pours," quips Das, "and when it's dry, it's a desert."

I'm working as an accounts assistant at a state-owned insurance company since 1995. With an MBA in finance from a reputed university in Tamil Nadu, I'm better qualified than my peers. But I haven't been promoted all these years because my peers have more work experience, and my organisation promotes people on seniority basis. I'm totally frustrated and am thinking of changing jobs. Should I?

It depends on what you are looking for. If you join a large professional organisation, you have to compete with CAS and MBAs from reputed institutes, which can be tough. Not being promoted is frustrating, I agree, but promotions are given not just on the basis of qualifications; performance also matters. Also, your current job gives you job security, which you may not get elsewhere. It will be better for you to carefully analyse your long-term goals and growth prospects before taking a decision.

I'm having problems charting a sound career path. At present I am a consultant at a small firm, having done my MBA in finance. Prior to this, I did a diploma in Hotel Management and worked for four years in F&B production (kitchens) in good five-star hotels in India and the Gulf. But it was low-paying and slow-moving, so I moved on. Interviewers are however not convinced about my reasons for this move, and even I am not sure what I should do next. Please advise.

Quite frankly, you can't blame the interviewers if you are not sure yourself about your career moves. Given that you took four years to decide you didn't want a career in hotels, they are bound to be queasy about your intentions. What you need to do first is talk to yourself and find out what you really want. If you are convinced, you can convince others. At the moment it appears to me that you did an MBA in finance not because you were interested in it, but because you wanted to move away from hotel management. But if you feel that the MBA was the right thing for you to do, then just forget the past and start exploring the options around you. Unless you are allergic to hotels, you could look at cashing in on your hotel management/MBA finance combo. Hotels also need finance people, you know.

I am a 29-year-old M.Sc. graduate with an MBA in marketing. For the last two years, I've been working as a sales and marketing executive with a top distributor in Karnataka. But I have a problem of stammering. It doesn't happen normally, but only when I speak with strangers or my superiors. It also happens when I give job interviews at good companies. Invariably my application gets rejected. I'm undergoing treatment, but the problem is still there. It's taking a toll on my peace of mind and my career. How can I tackle this?

Cheer up; you have something in common with several great people: Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Marilyn Monroe, Isaac Newton and Jack Welch, for instance. But seriously, even though it's unfair, people don't take very kindly to a stammer. Even you wouldn't like it if a salesman took too long to explain something. From what you've said, it appears your problem is not genetic but more of a confidence thing. And that is best cured through scientific counselling. Look out for a good counselling centre to complement your medical treatment. Also, you could look for a job that doesn't require you to meet customers too often.

I am working in the technical process of a reputed call centre. However, this was not my preferred choice of work. Being a graduate in mechanical engineering, I wanted to work in the manufacturing industry, but couldn't get a job. Now what I am worried about is whether my stint here will be considered "work experience" when I do get through into manufacturing. Quite a few of my colleagues are also in a similar quandary. Please tell us if this experience will count.

It boils down to relevance, really. If the work you do in your current organisation is relevant to, or similar to, the work you are likely to do in the manufacturing organisation of your choice, the experience will surely count. But if the work is different, your call centre experience is unlikely to count. But you could also explore other avenues open to you, which may be more directly related to the kind of work that you are doing in your current job. If manufacturing doesn't work out, one of these alternatives may. So, first find out which industries employ people with your kind of skills.

Answers to your career concerns are contributed by Tarun Sheth (Senior Consultant) and Shilpa Sheth (Managing Partner, US practice) of HR firm, Shilputsi Consultants. Write to Help,Tarun! c/o Business Today, Videocon Tower, Fifth Floor, E-1, Jhandewalan Extn., New Delhi-110055.

Think stockmarket. Think small. India's brokerage houses are zeroing in on the retail investor, and are looking for skill sets to demystify trading. "Being in the service delivery business," says Tarun Shah, CEO, Sharekhan, "we firmly believe that it is our people, and people alone, who can create a value proposition by efficiently delivering services and creating new product offerings." The challenge is to simplify investing and thus "empower the investor to make informed decisions". For its part, Sharekhan hopes to add 100 'sherus' (employees) by the fiscal-end to fortify its it network and customer service, mainly at junior and mid-management levels. Select senior-level recruitment is planned too. And the message is clear: classic 'domain' knowledge and stock numeracy is not enough.

Among other recruiters, Geojit Financial Services is taking on dealers, back office and managerial staff. According to Joseph George K., gm (Broking Operations), online trading knowledge, managerial capability, knowledge of market, an NSE Certification in Financial Markets (NCFM) qualification and a year's experience would help. But beyond that, the job isn't just a whole lot of ivory-tower calculations.

-Payal Sethi

Retail Sensitivity
If retail is software, training is the login password.

Silken tongue: Sensitive people are as important as IT tools

Malls are discovering that success involves much more than glass-and-concrete stunners and light-flashing escalators. Above all, it involves people. Sensitive people who feel what you, the customer, feel. And are passionate about engaging your interest.

Asking for too much? Not if Business Development Resource Group (BDRG), a retail training initiative, can help it. Enter a shop, and the attendant may already have you figured on an admixture of "pure gut instinct and an inventory of questions provided by training institutes", offers Amit Puri, a trainer at BDRG. The job's role, he adds, is to be "consultative and suggestive towards the consumer", though details vary depending on the shop's brand focus. BDRG runs training modules for brands as diverse as DCM Benetton, Raymond, K's Mall, Swarovski and Bholason Jewellers.

Jewellers, would you believe it, are looking to standardise sales behaviour and processes, the McJobs way, while others are onto it-modelled Customer Relationship Management (CRM). "The B-schools are not far behind either," says Anil Rajpal, Manager (Retail), ksa Technopak.

-Amanpreet Singh