‘Employees no more inclined to start-ups, want to switch’

In a reversal of early trend, employees are no more finding start-ups attractive with nearly 88 per cent of staff saying they are ready to leave their current jobs in new ventures if offered opportunities in larger and more established companies, says a survey. 

According to a JobBuzz survey, the employer rating platform from TimesJobs.com, 88 per cent of professionals working in different startups want to switch to larger companies.

Only 12 per cent respondents felt content with their current startup work profiles. The best of the best talents once eagerly joined startups, but after a year or so, a majority of professionals seem desperate to leave for more established players. "The recent spate of retrenchments have deeply affected the very important and high-engagement sense of ownership and belonging that young professionals felt when they joined these start-ups," TimesJobs.com COO Vivek Madhukar said. The survey findings seem to point towards an impending attrition problem that start-ups could face in the near future as they seek to scale. "The start-ups need to have a relook at their hiring strategy so they pick people who share the vision of the founders and feel themselves part of the company's growth story," Madhukar added. 

When asked why they were thinking of quitting their startup jobs, 43 per cent felt they would be able to draw higher salaries in established companies. But a significant 30 per cent said it was due to the nature of their jobs in startups as they were unable to maintain work-life balance. Only 15 per cent survey respondents admitted that they wanted to switch to an established company to seek better job security. Over 750 professionals working in different new ventures across the start-up hotbeds of Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon, Delhi and Noida took part in the survey.

 

Meanwhile, for an organisation, assessing behaviour competencies is very important to find the right job fit and companies should consider the profiles based on such assessments that provide insight into the candidate and are not driven by academic results, says a survey. 

According to a survey by MeritTrac Research, assessment of competencies is growing fast and used widely by multinational companies that have adopted global practices to be on par with the emerging trends of the world. “The use of behaviour assessments was a common practice for hiring senior and leadership job roles, but now using them for the entry-level jobs marks the beginning of the change that will be seen in hiring,” the report said.

However, it noted that these recruitment drives behaviour assessment results were largely used as inputs rather than decision making tools. The key competencies of the job roles across various industry segments include adaptability, sociability, Team work, persistence, persuasive, creativity, conscientiousness and organised. 

These behaviours by themselves or in combination with one or more are found to be essential for any given entry level job role across any sector, the report said. “The assessment of these behaviour traits by employers will get them candidates with the behavioural disposition for the roles in their organisations,” it added. The report further noted that hiring individuals with some work experience would be suitable for creative jobs.

“Skills and behaviour assessed through psychometric tools along with a measure on job performance give the employer a best fit / best suited profile than the one based on instinct or credentials provided by the candidate,” the report said. 

According to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the cost of a ‘bad hire’ to an organisation is five times the bad hire’s annual salary and hence companies should focus on hiring the right talent to mitigate business risks.