More and more talent is leaving established organisations and joining startups, experts say

Monday July 20, 2015 , 3 min Read

With startups being the buzz word today, industry is witnessing employee movement, especially in mid- to senior-level, from established organisations to new age ventures, say experts.

"There has a lot of movement of employees from well-established companies to startups, primarily because of the value proposition that they get offered in terms of pay-package, roles and responsibilities and future career graph," PeopleStrong HR Services Co-Founder and CEO Pankaj Bansal told PTI.

"From what we have seen, employees from well established FMCG, consulting firms and IT firms are moving to startups," he said. This shift in preferences can be clearly attributed to "meaningful aspirations" the young generation has from their work and workplaces, he pointed out.

According to PTI, Michael Page India Regional Director Nicolas Dumoulin said funding for startups has increased significantly through private equity and venture capital. "This results in more ambitious growth plans for startups. This is mainly in the technology or e-commerce space. As a result, budgets for hiring have increased significantly. Both higher growth prospects and higher budget availability are resulting in these startups being empowered to hire more talented people," he pointed out.

GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel said in terms of hiring trend, professionals who joined startups are either at the earlier stage of their career or the ones those who have done extremely well in large corporations and would have spent almost 15 years in the industry and now willing to risk themselves with the startups. People from sectors like e-commerce, IT, services are seen moving to startups, he added.

Ankit Bansal, Founder of My Kind of Job said after the success of quite a few startups lately, the industry is witnessing a positive shift in mindset of people towards working at startups. "The other significant trend is startups being able to attract campus students, which was earlier not even imaginable in India," he added.

Also, startups are offering stock options in order to attract talent, Dumoulin said, adding this helps them suppress the salaries they offer and engage people for long term. "The candidate views this as an attractive value addition, as the potential of cashing-in when a company is bought over or announces its Initial Public Offering (IPO) is much larger than if he would start in an already established organisation," he said.

"While compensation is important for this next generation of employees, an increasing number(almost 65 per cent) is now looking for better growth and career opportunities and startups have been able to provide a mix of these factors to a lot of job seekers," PeopleStrong HR Services' Bansal said.

The major sectors where we have observed lot of startup hiring are technology specifically - data analytics, mobility, security, cloud and mobile applications, retail, ecommerce, services (travel, real-estate), micro-finance and consulting, Bansal said.

Experts, however, said that largely well-funded startups are witnessing professionals movement. "On the other hand, non funded startups, which are seeded from promoter's own funds, still have to contend with trying to make best out of talent that fits their budget," Ankit Bansal said.

Image Credit : Shutterstock