Attracting Engineering Talent in India: 4 Tips From Talent Leaders

India has become a leader in great engineering talent, causing more companies to flock there and open Global Capability Centers (GCCs). As a result, the market for software engineers there is now highly competitive for all types of organizations, including corporations, startups, companies with an established presence in India, and those that are entering India for the first time. 

While organizations can proactively reach out to candidates and build their pipeline, creating an attractive employer brand can reduce the burden on your talent acquisition teams and increase your chances of finding the right people for your roles. Whether you’re just getting started with hiring in India or have already been doing so for years, the following tips can help you improve your branding and align your offerings with the needs and wants of software engineers in India.  

Offer Realistic Compensation

Although compensation is just one of many factors that candidates consider when deciding to apply for a role, it’s an important one. Milton David, Head of Talent Acquisition – APAC at Twilio, said that although many companies look at data from the company headquarters when setting compensation, “what you lack is the local reality of what the talent wants, what works, what doesn’t work.” This applies to benefits too, which can include things like the ability to work remotely and learning opportunities. According to David, the India market is very dynamic and there’s heavy competition for talent, so what you offer as an employer needs to be extremely relevant to what employees want. 

Provide Growth Opportunities and Meaningful Work

Engineers in India value growth and quality work. “Whereas in other countries it’s okay to not get a promotion every year or two, people in India get really impatient about that,” said Porvi Mahajan, Director and India Head of Recruiting at Coupang. Companies should consider this when deciding how to structure their job leveling so that engineers can continue to see career growth over time. Additionally, Mahajan said, “The quality of work has become extremely important to engineers in India today.” While offering great compensation can get high-quality talent in the door, being able to retain that talent will depend on the type of work that engineers do. 

Create a Great Candidate Experience

There’s now a lot of transparency into an organization’s interview process and candidate experience because of websites like Glassdoor, where candidates can review their interview experience. “People may choose to not apply with you simply because of what they’re reading on Glassdoor,” said Mahajan. “It’s a big thing in India today.” Because it’s easy for candidates to see what your interview experience is like, it’s incredibly important for companies to create an interview process that’s personalized, engaging, fast, and reflective of their company culture. 

Interviewers used to have split their attention between the candidate and taking notes, but this isn’t the case anymore. Interviews can be recorded and AI tools can generate summaries. This gives interviewers more time to focus on asking personalized questions and digging deeper, said Ashish Singla, Engineering Leader at Airbnb. He also advised using your CRM to automate and personalize the candidate experience. You can send targeted messaging that resonates at different parts of the interview process, such as what a candidate needs to be successful in each stage of the process. At Twilio, intentional personalization comes “from the way we draft our emails, the way we sort of do our initial screening calls, and the way we engage them through the process to ensure that they feel that they’ve been chosen, [rather] than being thrown into the process for the sake of closing a position,” said David.  

Taking a long time to get back to candidates can leave a bad impression, especially when the Indian job market moves fast. The amount of time it takes to get back to candidates not only relies on the talent team, but also the interviewers, which can present a challenge. Mahajan found that interviewers oftentimes did not follow the Service Level Agreement for submitting feedback on time, which results in Talent Acquisition not getting back to candidates on time. To solve this, the Talent Acquisition team at Coupang now tracks how quickly interviewers submit feedback and how often an interviewer reschedules. They use these metrics to hold the entire business accountable. “We now publish reports to leaders to say here are your defaulters in the last quarter. These are the people who reschedule more than 10%, [and] your other people who don’t submit feedback on time,” said Mahajan.

Because candidates spend a lot of time with interviewers, interviewers play a huge role in shaping the candidate experience. Ideally, you want your highest performing and most engaged employees to represent your company. The Talent Acquisition team at Coupang asks candidates about their experience with specific interviewers, and they quickly take action on interviewers who are not engaged or have been disrespectful to candidates.

Demonstrate Diversity and Inclusivity

Companies that want to create diverse engineering teams need to create an employer brand that reflects that. Mahajan found that female employees wanted flexibility — an environment that’s not over-indexing on the number of hours spent in the office and benefits around maternity leave and returning to work after having children. By knowing what candidates value, you can then exhibit those values to the market and offer those benefits in order to attract the types of candidates you want. 

Supporting diversity means recognizing that different people have different needs. “Why would somebody who’s in high demand look at you as a brand and see that yes, they can create a career with you?” asked Singla. Company policies can help support those various needs, demonstrating your commitment to inclusion. For example, Airbnb allows employees to live and work anywhere — no questions asked. To support parents with young children, Airbnb allows employees who are on business travel to bring their children and a caretaker. 

These tips are just some of the many ways that companies can attract skilled and diverse engineering talent in India. To get more advice, including how to attract internal candidates and improve join rates, from talent acquisition leaders at Coupang, Airbnb, and Twilio, watch our “Leveraging Your Engineering Brand to Attract Top Talent” webinar.