To tap the huge demand for organised white collar jobs in the country, a manpower recruitment giant has called for reforms in the sector to ensure better deals for candidates.
"Official figures put the organised contracted white collar employees to mere 250,000 in the country, while the real potential of this sector is 10 to 12 million," Madhu Damodaran, senior vice president, Teamlease Services(P) Ltd, said.
Teamlease is a major player in contract skilled manpower provider sector in the country, which has seen 300 per cent growth in the last one year. "We have jumped from 13,000 employees to 40,000 employees, of which 50 per cent are beginners," Damodaran said.
'Staffing companies' providing skilled manpower to various industries are booming and has an opportunity to prosper further provided there are reforms in the Contract Labour Regulation Act, 1972, he said.
"Some amount of liberalised labour laws can really help the contract manpower to strike a better deal," he stated.
Teamlease has around 19 offices in the country and mainly caters to financial services, banking and telecommunication.
"For the last three years, on an average I gave one appointment letter per hour," Damodaran claimed.
Damodaran said, "With the grim scene prevailing over state-owned employment exchange, the youths are increasingly looking towards staffing companies for job openings. Employment exchanges have about 4 crore (40 million) people registered with them, while they provide jobs to only 100,000 persons per year."
The Teamlease senior vice president stated that there is mismatch between jobs and available manpower. Contrary to the belief that there are no vacancies, the company database has 3,000 vacancies which are awaiting the right candidate, Damodaran added.
"To fill the gap, the educational curriculum needs to be modified and in certain sectors like information technology (it), the state governments are already in contact with the industry to formulate curriculum as per the industry requirement," he said.
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