India Desk
We find, assess and help you keep the people who will run your India business.
Country and general management, sales and business development leadership, plant, quality and engineering roles, and the finance and administrative hires a subsidiary needs early.
The candidate who interviews best in India is not always the one who will report honestly to a European parent, and telling the difference from a video call is genuinely hard.
We interview in person, take references properly, and tell you what we actually think rather than presenting a shortlist and stepping back.
The problem
Indian professional culture rewards presentation and deference in an interview, both of which are poor predictors of how someone will behave when a project is failing and the parent needs to hear it.
European hiring managers consistently over weight interview performance and under weight reference checking, which in India is where the real information sits and where it takes effort to get.
The other systematic error is title inflation. A general manager title in a mid sized Indian company can describe a role with three reports and no budget, and a European reader assumes something else entirely.
Then there is the offer stage, which behaves differently. Counter offers are common, notice periods of two to three months are normal for senior roles, and a candidate who has accepted is not a candidate who has started.
We stay involved through notice and into the first months, because the failure point is more often between offer and week twelve than in the selection.
How we search
Retained search for senior roles, and a lighter contingent process for volume and mid level hiring.
Written from what the job actually requires in India rather than translated from the European equivalent. Where you have not run the role before, we tell you what a realistic profile looks like.
Direct approach into the sectors and companies the right person is likely to be in, rather than posting an advertisement and sorting the response.
Interviewed in person by us before you see anyone, with a written assessment on each candidate covering capability, motivation and the honest concerns.
References taken from people who actually managed the candidate, plus employment and education verification and, for senior roles, a background check.
What the role genuinely pays in that city and sector, including the structure of Indian packages, so the offer is competitive without being naive.
Support through negotiation, the counter offer that is likely to come, the notice period, and the first ninety days when new hires are most likely to leave.
How it runs
A senior search typically runs eight to twelve weeks from brief to accepted offer, and then a notice period of one to three months on top.
The role as it actually is, the compensation range that will attract it, and agreement on what we are prepared to compromise on.
Direct approach, screening and first interviews conducted by us, with a progress note rather than silence.
Three to five candidates with written assessments. You interview a shortlist, not a pile.
References taken before the offer rather than after, package structured properly, and the negotiation supported.
We stay in contact through the notice period, and check in through the first ninety days, which is when hires are lost.
Common questions
General guidance rather than advice on a particular matter. Requirements and timelines change, and sector rules vary.
Not as an employer. Employing someone in India requires an Indian entity to be the employer of record, with payroll, provident fund and the associated registrations.
The alternatives are a consultancy arrangement, which carries real misclassification risk if the person is an employee in substance, or an employer of record arrangement. We will set out which is appropriate rather than defaulting to the easiest.
One month is common for junior roles, two to three months is normal for senior and technical positions, and some employers enforce it strictly. Build it into your plan rather than treating an accepted offer as a start date.
It depends heavily on city, sector and the size of the company the candidate is coming from, and the difference between Delhi, Bangalore and a tier two city is substantial.
We benchmark the specific role rather than quoting a market average, and we advise on package structure, because Indian compensation is built differently from a European salary.
You verify it. Employment and education verification is routine in India and we run it as standard for senior hires, along with a background check where the role warrants one.
We also take references from people who actually supervised the candidate, which takes more effort than calling the names on the form and is the part that produces real information.
We offer a replacement guarantee for a defined period on retained searches, and the terms are agreed at the outset. More usefully, we try to prevent it: most early departures we see are caused by an unclear mandate or an absent reporting line rather than by the wrong hire.
Yes, for a plant or an engineering centre we build the hiring plan in sequence, starting with the leader who will then help select their own team, rather than hiring twenty people in parallel to a specification nobody has tested.
Related
Cover while the search runs, and a real specification at the end of it.
Read more →Building a team in India rather than filling a single role.
Read more →Contracts, policies and the employment framework around the hire.
Read more →Making the new reporting line work once the person has started.
Read more →Write to us
If you know what you are hiring for, send the specification. If you are not sure what the role should be, that is a more useful conversation and it is where most India hires go wrong.
We answer from New Delhi and from Bilbao, so European clients are not waiting a day for a reply.
Onesto Management Consultancy
New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Bilbao