'Insights' Lecture Series at XIMB Hosts Vishal Mehra, VP-Asia Pacific, Office Tiger

'Insights' Lecture Series at XIMB Hosts Vishal Mehra, VP-Asia Pacific, Office Tiger

"Our country is facing a paradox of employment across the industry. Currently India has 48% of unemployment on one hand and 70% vacancies on the other! The maximum shortfall is at the middle management levels which include Assistant Managers, Managers, Senior Managers and AVPs that any industry finds hardest to recruit.

At any given point almost 70% of these positions in most companies are vacant," said Vishal Mehra, Vice President - Asia Pacific of Office Tiger during Insights, the CEO talk series at XIMB, on the 13th of November 2006.

While talking on 'What India needs from managers today', he emphasized that the manpower shortfall varies anywhere between 25-75% depending on the company. "The opportunity to engage in dialogue with 150+ potential middle managers was just too much to ignore. On behalf of the senior HR professionals in my vertical, I'm here to ask you to exercise your power to be the solution to our problems," urged Mr Mehra. He also pointed out that the 'year end' happens to be an extremely critical time for HR professionals in the industry as it is the time for the annual appraisal cycle to be initiated.

During his discourse Mr. Mehra introduced the audience to 'OfficeTiger', the brainchild of two Princeton graduates- Joe Sigelman and Randy Altschuler. These two chose Chennai as their base by using a very scientific technique as this city enjoys daylight when New York on the other side of the globe, sleeps. Obvious benefit ranged from lower input costs to the ample pool of the skilled manpower they required. Randy stayed back in New York to source the work and Joe headed to Chennai to set-up the processing operation.

Having grown from those humble beginnings, today OfficeTiger is a 10,000+ people strong, professional services firm providing more than 70 different services to almost 50 different clients all of whom are Fortune 100 companies. It has a global footprint spanning 9 countries with 29 delivery centers and 41 onsite client operations. Its revenues are projected at approx. USD 1 billion this fiscal year.

Coming back to the discussion, Mr. Mehra raised two fundamental issues- "48% unemployed and 70% job vacancies." He went on to add "I will give it to you in one word, EMPLOYABILITY. Today's job aspirants are skilled, well educated, looking for jobs and are unable to find them because we the companies think they are unemployable. Employability is a single word that encompasses a lot of traits that employers look for and are unable to find.

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Contributed by -
Rohit Arya,
Member, Illuminatix
PR & Media Cell
Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.

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