If you have PhD, MNCs have place

BANGALORE: Sitting in the posh Delhi office of Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 30-year-old Sahana Joshi is focused on preparing a report on the HR trends in the Asia-Pacific region. She is, however, not the typical graduate whom multinationals in India liked to select at college-recruitment melas, and let the experience in the company make up for the lack of specialised education. That trend, it appears, is on the wane. In fact, Joshi and five others in her firm have one attribute in common: they are all PhDs.

The number of young doctorates is growing within the ranks of IT, BPO, KPO, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies. “It has been a clear trend over the past five years; young researchers are taking up more and more corporate jobs,” said Vivek Kulkarni, who heads Brickwork India, a BPO. “Thousands of them have taken up such jobs.”

So much so that M Natarajan, chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has expressed serious concern over multinationals luring young researchers away from critical government institutions. The DRDO has registered an attrition rate of 20 per cent this year. “We will lose our young talent if we do not work to retain them,” Natarajan said.

The MNCs, on the other hand, have been aggressive in acquiring talent. General Electric has hired 1,500 PhDs over the past six years, and they account for some 60 per cent of its R&D staff. Motorola has been another large-scale employer of doctorates, hiring 1,200 of them. Other firms keenly seeking PhDs include McKinsey & Company, Mphasis, Microsoft India, Infosys, Wipro, Hewlett-Packard, and Brickwork.

“The private sector hires doctorates to predict imminent market trends and to determine appropriate investments,” said BS Murthy, head of Human Capital Consulting. 

The corporate doctorate-hunt has become frenetic at a time when India suffers from a shortage of PhDs.

CNR Rao, scientific adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has said: “The Indian economy will collapse if we don’t have enough researchers.” India currently produces 7,000 PhDs every year in science and technology. Rao said the country needs 20,000 more.

While pay scales in government labs begin from Rs1.5 lakh per annum, the corporate sector offers Rs3.5 lakh for similar positions. And salaries in private firms are 10 times higher than government compensation at middle and senior levels.

But for India’s highly qualified professionals, environment is as significant an inducement. “The work culture is totally professional,” Joshi said. “Besides, performance incentives bring out the best in employees.”

The potential of research and development is central to a wide range of areas from data integration to management consulting. “Future demands constant innovation and research is the only answer,” said Richard F Rashid, vice-president of Microsoft Research, at a seminar in Bangalore last week. “Industry needs researchers in large numbers for product development that will shape technology in the next 15 years.”