The economic slowdown may have led to a drought of senior management vacancies across the corporate sector, but the world of startup firms is grappling with scarcity of a differing kind: paucity of senior-level talent. "It is tough to find people with the right skills in e-commerce in India," says Kirti Raj, VP, HR at Yebhi. "Very few professionals can manageonline marketing and there is hardly any available talent for merchandising in categories like books and sports," she says. Yebhi is hunting for a vice-president for products. The portal will also start looking for professionals to head merchandising in new categories like books and sports. It hopes to close these openings in the next three months and is looking at international talent to fill the gap. "We are looking at global talent with international exposure. These are professionals settled abroad who might have plans of relocating to India," she says.
Yebhi is not alone. If the vacancies in August are any indication, there are critical senior level positions open at most e-commerce companies. While Makemytrip is looking for a marketing communications head, an associate director, technology, and a senior manager for its international business, Snapdeal is looking for a director - engineering. Insurance portal PolicyBazaar is looking for a managing director for its loans business and food portal Just Eat is looking for a chief commercial officer.
Purva Misra, senior VP , HR, at Makemytrip feels homegrown talent is either scarce or already stretched to manage the growth momentum in e-commerce. "Top talent is a seasoned group of professionals who is probably highly successful in its domain and has developed a reputation. Asking such professionals to leave their career and join a dream or a riskprone venture is daunting."
Subrata Mitra, partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners and a board member of companies like Flipkart and Myntra also points to the lack of top talent in invested companies. "Most of our companies have a paucity of talent in product management, user experience and digital marketing. Some even have difficulties in filling senior engineering positions," he says. Mitra feels this is really the first wave of such e-commerce companies in India and that many of the basic requirements of this industry were not in great demand earlier.
Search firms and job portals also attest to an increase in hiring mandates by e-commerce firms for senior positions. On Head-Honchos, a jobs portal for senior-level professionals, most e-commerce companies have mentioned three months to invite applications for open positions while companies in other sectors usually restrict the time period for applications to two or twoand-a-half months on the portal. "Senior level openings have multiplied four times over the past six months in e-commerce. Some vacancies are perpetually open on our website but it is hard to find people as there is no ready funnel of talent available," says Uday Sodhi, CEO, HeadHonchos. Prateek Srivastava, manager, IT and ITeS practice at Elixir Consulting says it is especially tough to find senior talent for functions like retail, marketing and warehousing.
"India does not have large warehouses and fulfillment centres unlike the West, so getting people to head a function like warehousing is a challenge. It is also difficult to find people who can straddle both online and offline marketing," he says.
Misra feels search firms find it difficult to find top talent for e-commerce due to the nature of required competencies. "To find someone in this group, who is at once process driven, but entrepreneurial, strategic yet willing to get hands dirty, is an expert in his/her domain yet shows learning agility and is willing to unlearn is not easy," she says. "The second factor is age - finding all the above qualities in a seasoned but an early Gen X bracket to manage the Gen Y populations of e-commerce companies."
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