Comments
Like me, if you are struggling to scale up your hiring with the right talent, how would you resolve it? Use headhunters, advertise on social media, post it on job portals, or launch an attractive employee referral programme? How about your alumni pool?
Alumni pride
Have you observed your colleagues nostalgically reminiscing about the past when they bump into ex-colleagues? Many enterprises are taking advantage of these relationships.
The recent news of Cognizant rehiring 13,000 ex-employees is a clever employer branding move. A rehiring ratio of 3-5 per cent is common in large IT services companies, given that most have lost close to 50,000 employees a year over the last four years due to attrition. But by broadcasting these rehiring numbers, Cognizant sure got the attention of its alumni.
With 12-20 per cent attrition in most enterprises today, alumni are a significant proportion of trained talent in the market, working for competitors or otherwise. But is rehiring your former colleagues that easy?
The disconnect
“I want to start the next new employee induction session with ‘How to Quit’,” said one of my CHRO — chief human resources officer — friends at a party. He was frustrated by how people were quitting in bizarre ways. He said some of his colleagues texted their resignations, they were unwilling to serve notice periods, switched off during notice periods, and even ghosted after handing in their letter.
Rehiring, hence, is an emotionally charged affair in many cases, as former employees have indulged in practices that their ex-managers may deem unacceptable. Even if you want to hire them in other teams, the ex-manager’s emotions can come into play. In cases where the ex-manager seeks to rehire, someone else in the team or HR will pose obstacles like “Can they come at the old salary? We have their peers who stayed back, and we don’t want to set an example that one can quit and come back at a higher salary”. Ironically, we will be okay hiring a rank stranger at a higher salary, and further risk the recruiting experiment, over cultural- and skill-fit alumni.
Once I was anchoring a leadership meeting discussing the boomerang hiring of about 10 ex-employees. The meeting turned into a war zone, with the tirade ranging from why we shouldn’t rehire anyone, to why we hire alumni without their ex-managers’ consent, and why we shouldn’t glorify employees’ return at the cost of stayers.
Numbers speak
According to attrition data in annual reports, the top eight Indian IT service bellwethers have had a staggering 17.15 lakh exits over the last five years. During this period, their collective headcount grew from 14.75 lakh to 19.85 lakh, an addition of 5 lakh employees.
The top 10 Indian private banks had 2.8 lakh exits over the last five years. In that period, their collective net headcount increased from 4 lakh to 7.6 lakh, a growth of 3.6 lakh employees.
The coveted FAANMG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Google) cluster in India saw over 1 lakh exits in the last five years, and its combined headcount grew from 1 lakh to 1.8 lakh. With such high exits and an aggressive scale of replacement hiring, the alumni pool is a rich source of trained talent.
It’s trending
Alumni hiring is not a new trend, however it has lacked the teeth it needed as most enterprises preferred unknown angels over known devils. A Harvard Business Review report quoted a study by human resources management services company UKG, which examined 3 million employee records from 2019 to 2022 and found that 28 per cent of “new hires” were boomerang hires who had resigned within the last 36 months. Another survey by HR consulting firm Robert Half in May 2024 found 48 per cent of people would consider returning to a previous company — up 8 per cent from 2023.
The annual study of corporate alumni programmes by the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business shows a boomerang hiring of 8 per cent among the companies surveyed.
The study says 98 per cent of the organisations surveyed had at least one full-time equivalent (FTE) employee managing the alumni programme in 2024, 49 per cent had a team of two or more, and 60 per cent had an annual budget of at least $100,000. How many FTEs or dollars are allocated in your organisation for alumni programmes?
Did you know that EA, the Enterprise Alumni platform, rates the top ten enterprise alumni networks based on rehiring percentage, number of new business opportunities generated, and mentorship and collaborative programmes or learning opportunities offered? It also rates how engaged the alumni community is. The last published list ranked Blackrock, PwC, McKinsey, EY, Marks and Spencer, and LinkedIn among the top ten.
Back home, we know the Flipkart alumni have taken it to newer heights. There have been 44 startups from Flipkart alumni, and six of these have turned into unicorns with a combined valuation of $25 billion. Eight of them are backed by Flipkart founder Binny Bansal.
As much as enterprises need a strategy to engage with their alumni, employees need to upskill on ‘when and how’ to resign! After all, we know it takes two to tango!
(Kamal Karanth is co-founder, Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm)
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.