Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer: A1 Future CEO Srish Agrawal, Kolkata, India (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Where do you hire from now? In the course of the last 10 years, what has been your hiring strategy?

Srish Agrawal: Either we hire from art colleges in Calcutta or we also advertise and invite people to come down to our office. We give them a piece of paper and ask them to draw something. There are several artists who did not get an opportunity to get into college, but they are really good at hand drawing. So, we ask them to do some kind of hand drawing. If they are good at hand drawing and visualizing what we want them to do, we hire them and teach them how to use computers.

SM: Interesting. You talked earlier about your attrition being low. Tell me more about how you managed that. Why is your attrition so low? What have you done that is unique and special to keep attrition so low?

SA: The biggest thing is that we are hiring freshers. Since we are hiring freshers, most of them really understand that the company has actually trained them. They do give benefit of this to the company as they grow along with the company. Then nobody was really hiring them … no computers. It was then that the company hired them, trained them on computers and did not charge them. From the first day that they join us, even while we are training them, we start offering them stipends.

When you talk about artists, Calcutta is a creative capital. So, if you are an artists, normally we find that most of them who are working with us are really good at heart. Most of them play office politics. So, the office environment remains cool and friendly. Because of the friendly environment, things continue, and the people continue working with us.

SM: What you describe, Srish, is an interesting phenomenon. Most of India today, if you look at what’s happening in the information technology industry, a lot of freshers are getting training from their companies. Infosys, IBM, they’re all running, essentially, in-house training institutes. Once they’ve trained these freshers and the freshers have done one or two projects, they become more valuable. Their salaries get a big bump, and then they immediately jump ship.

SA: You are absolutely correct.

SM: Most of the IT industry doesn’t have any sense of loyalty or gratitude for the training that the companies have imparted on them or the investments that the companies have made. I think the distinction, however, is the one that you mentioned. Because these are artists, they’re more emotional by nature. They’re not so mercenary, and that’s where you’re getting the loyalty from.

SA: Absolutely. Even during the interview, we look at more than talent. We look at the attitude of the person. If the attitude is positive, the chances of a candidate’s continuing are much greater. But if the attitude is negative, however talent the candidate might be, he could leave you today or tomorrow.

SM: Yes. These are probably people who also want to stay in Calcutta. They’re not necessarily looking to move out of Calcutta, right?

SA: Absolutely correct. There communication skills are also not very good.

SM: Right. They probably don’t speak English very well.

SA: Yes. Most of them don’t speak good English.

SM: What is the competition for talent, for graphic artists in Calcutta? Are there other major employers for artists?

SA: No. There is not much competition in Calcutta.

SM: So, as long as they want to stay in Calcutta, and they don’t have great communication skills, you don’t have to compete a huge deal to retain this talent.

SA: Yes, absolutely. There are some places in Calcutta, but most of the creative design companies are very small companies of maybe 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. The appetite for hiring more people is low. Even if they want to hire someone, they will hire one experienced person or two experienced people. Beyond that, it doesn’t match their budgets. At this time, our salary structures have improved graphically, so that is also one of the reasons that these people feel safe continuing with the company. It’s not easy to pick 10 people out of the team and place them somewhere else.

SM: So, there’s a cohesion in the team, and they feel like they belong in the company?

SA: Yes.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer: A1 Future CEO Srish Agrawal, Kolkata, India
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