Raja Simhan T. E.

Chennai , Jan. 4

LOOKING for a chief executive officer (CEO) or a chief financial officer (CFO) to work on a temporary basis, say six months to a year? Approach a placement agency, and you will get a qualified CEO or CFO immediately.

Don't be surprised. The western culture of hiring senior executives on a temporary basis — under temporary staffing (temp) — by firms in India is catching up. A temp is on the payrolls of a placement agency, but works for a different firm as a temporary employee.

There are over 800 temps working as senior executives, including CEOs and CFOs, and earning monthly salaries of over Rs 30,000. They work for companies mainly in sectors such as information technology (IT), IT-enabled services (ITES), business process outsourcing and telecom sectors, according to sources in placement firms.

Globally, temporary staffing is a $140-billion industry with over 5 million people employed as temps. India's potential is about 8-10 million jobs. So far, temps have been mostly used in low-end job categories such as receptionists and salesmen with monthly salaries of around Rs 5,000, the sources said.

However, this trend among temps is moving to high-end jobs. Large firms, including multinationals, are looking at highly skilled temps as specialists for a temporary period — six months to a year. Temps help companies in various areas, including the launch of products and the identification of new business models, according to Mr E. Balaji, General Manager, Staffing Solutions Group, Ma Foi, a Chennai-based placement firm. Ma Foi has around 50 temps working as senior executives in various firms, he said.

Flexibility for clients: Using temps, clients have the flexibility of retaining them and sending them out when not required. For instance, if the product or a project fails, the company can send the temp out, and the placement agency redeploys the same person with a different firm.

However, if the project or product succeeds, the client retains the temp for a longer duration, and sometimes, even absorbs the person as a permanent employee. Ma Foi has a temp who is on a personal visit to India for a year, and this person is working as a consultant in an Indian firm, helping the company in a new business model, he said.

According to Mr Ashok Reddy, Managing Director, TeamLease, a placement agency, out of the 12,000 associates that the company has, over 500 are in the middle salary brackets (Rs 35,000 to Rs 60,000 a month) and a little over 100 people in the higher salary brackets. The skill sets and the industry-spread of these people vary and they are primarily used in technical and special project requirements, he said.

Under temporary staffing, TeamLease placed a chief legal officer for a Mumbai firm for six months. A company in Chennai required a CEO for five months to handle a difficult transition. The company also did senior IT-level assignments for firms in Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, he said. Mr Reddy declined to name his clients, since most firms do not want to provide temp names in these instances.

Handy for start-ups: CEOs under temp staffing also come in handy for start-up firms, says Mr Gautam Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech, an IT recruitment company. Temps, acting as CEOs, help start-ups in the initial stages, quit the firm and move on to a different job. There are also technical architects helping companies to release new products, he said.

The need for highly paid workers will increase as the number of people employed in the "organised workforce" in the private sector goes up (this number is always a percentage of the total workforce and needs a large base of employed people for it to assume significant proportions). Simultaneously, the increasing trend of companies outsourcing non-core functions will also happen, he said.

Mr Sudhakar Balakrishnan, Director and Chief Operating Officer, Peopleone Consulting India Pvt Ltd, a placement firm, says that the company has 30-40 managerial and supervisory staff and at least a couple of senior management executives on its rolls working on contracts ranging from six months to a year. It is just a matter of time before this numbers goes up. Most of the high-paid temps are with multinational firms and since the number of such clients is on a steady rise, the need for high-paid temps would also go up. Soon Indian firms will follow suit, he said.

The high-paid temps are predominant in the IT and ITES sectors. An old economy business like manufacturing and other service sectors are a part of this momentum and can look at high-paid temps for specific jobs for a short term, he said.

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