After nearly one and a half decades, Coal India Ltd is on recruitment mode.

Having suffered from a huge shortage of executive staff, especially in the junior cadres, CIL is gearing up for recruitment of nearly 2,000 fresh engineers, managers, chattered accountants (CA) and others this fiscal. There has also been a drive to clear backlog of promotions from non-executive to executive cadre and within the executive cadre as well.

According to a company official, against an approved strength of 19,000 management staff, CIL is currently having 15,400 executives, including recent campus recruitment of nearly 1,100 fresh engineering graduates, mostly from IITs and NITs (National Institute of Technology).

“Campus recruitment of another 500 junior executives is expected to be over by June-July this year,” the Director - Personnel of CIL, Mr R Mohan Das, told Business Line .

“In addition, we are planning to recruit nearly 1,400 junior executives in engineering, management, finance, HR and others through media advertisement. The recruitment process is expected to begin in May. The recruitment should be completed by December.”

High standards

According to Mr Mohan Das, 35 per cent of the engineering graduates are being recruited from IITs and the rest from premier institutes such as NITs, Indian School of Mines - Dhanbad, Banaras Hindu University and others.

In finance, the company is recruiting fresh CAs who have cleared both the preliminary and the final exams in the first attempt.

“We have already recruited 170 CAs and more will follow,” he said.

Meanwhile, CIL recently promoted 2,800 diploma engineers to the junior executive (E1) category.

Initiative is underway to clear the backlog in promotions of executives. “In April, we will clear promotion of 1,300 executives. We are hopeful to regularise the entire procedure within this fiscal,” he added.

Recruitment of retirees

In a parallel attempt the CIL board has recently approved a proposal to fill one per cent (190) of the approved executive strength (19,000) through appointing retired executives from CIL and other PSUs.

“In 2011-12, we are expecting to appoint 95 such retired executives in specialised services such as mine operation, mine planning, maintenance of heavy equipment, finance, HR and others,” he said.

Meanwhile, talking on condition of anonymity, senior CIL officials blamed shortage of manpower as one of the major reasons behind the lacklustre production growth in 2010-11.

“The situation is alarming. The average age mix of executives is as high as 53-54 years with 700 odd are superannuating a year,” a senior company official told Business Line on condition of anonymity.

According to him, the shortage of management staff has had a telling impact on its project execution and production performance in the recent years.

Mr Mohan Das admits that the company has a relatively aged executive manpower. However, he promises that the age-mix will come down below 45 years once the recruitment is completed by this fiscal-end.

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