As part of the Big Bad Recruiting Blog Swap, today's post is brought to you by Gautam Ghosh.

India is facing a huge shortage of HR professionals, especially Recruiters. This is when not having an organization like ERE actually becomes very evident.

Sure there are Recruiters groups in India, like ERA but in my view there is not too much capability building going to raise the level of business advisory services that recruiters should be doing with their clients.

The main reason for that is that there is no formalised body of knowledge about recruiting. Recruiters are part of HR but they need to build additional skills of branding, selling and marketing all the while keeping both hiring managers and candidates happy.

In India, large recruitment firms like Ma Foi act as the training group for graduates to 'learn' recruiting. They may decide they like it and then shift to being an in-house recruiter in a corporation, or they might like client service better and stick to being a third party recruiter for life.

A certification however is sorely missing in Indian recruitment.

With search, selection and head hunting becoming key to organizational profitability in hyper-growth markets like India, firms can ill-afford to have recruiters to be just meeting the numbers. Recuiters have to step up and become business consultants and guide their clients, not just chase the numbers.

To do that they need to be trained on a curriculum that involves:

1. Client Service
2. Consulting Skills
3. Branding and Marketing
4. Advanced Sourcing
5. Selection methodologies (with mandatorily specializing in two areas at least!)
   

It might seem that I'm raising the bar and making the problem more acute, but unless a short term pain is borne, the professions credibility will go for a toss!

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About the blogger: Gautam Ghosh is an Organizational Consultant based out of Hyderabad, India and he blogs on HR and OD issues at http://gauteg.blogspot.com/