Some years ago we were trying to hire some people in India and this is parts of that story.

I came in contact with a young man through LinkedIn. We chatted for well over three months and decided to meet. He flew to our Cape Town office and we had meetings and compared what to do for a couple of days.

I was eager to build our business in India so against my gut I agreed to take him on. But taking him on required three full days of salary and perks negotiations. I was exhausted. After we shook hands the young man continued to negotiate, via email once he was back in India. Duh! He was given some simple assignments to fulfil before we arrived. It was stuff he could do in his free time.

I arrived in India a month later together with a small entourage. It was the young mans time to shine. First night he took us to a local Indian restaurant and I got sick immediately, even before leaving the place. The next day the young man continued to negotiate about his salary package. I couldn’t believe it. I had been warned about the greed of some Indian people but this was too much, and I kept running to the bathroom.

I wanted to look at offices but he had only arranged one place to visit and that was in an area a stones throw from his family house. When we arrived at the site the builders were already busy building the mans dream. They all greeted him with first name. I think they were related. “This is going to be technology, here’s the call centre and here’s my room etc”.  I had to run to the bathroom all the time and lost 6 kilos those five days. When looking at the proposed team on an org chart we noticed that the last names looked similar. When we addressed this we found that most of the people were close relatives.

We had a meeting with a possible financial manager, not close related, perhaps distant. When I asked him what he knew about Travelstart he gave me a five-minute story of our company, correct with dates, numbers, people. He even told me how many kids I have and my wife’s name. I was looking around to see if someone was standing with Q cards. A different experience to say the least.

One afternoon we were invited to his family home. My colleagues bailed out and rather wanted to sit in the air-conditioned hotel talking strategy, so I went alone. It was a typical upper middle class Indian family area. His family was lovely, all living together. I was so sick I thought I was dying. The whole family watched me as I was trying not to faint while trying to eat the food and drinking tap water… no kidding! On the way back I asked the driver to stop at a hotel. I think they had to renovate the toilets after my visit.

My colleague was doing a great job scouting for programmers but found it a bit harder than expected. We told our young Indian man that the launch was probably going to have to be postponed for at least two months because it was more complex with recruits than expected.  And our young man complained.  After two days of wining we understood what his problems was… If we delayed launch chance were he wouldn’t get his bonus. That was it for me. I fired him. He’s career with the company lasted for six days.

Hiring is extremely hard on your home turf, but it’s nothing compared to hire in a new country. The important thing is however to get the first one right. The rest of the team almost falls in place automatically.

Our young Indian man gave us one of our core pillars when it comes to recruitment: never hire anyone who cares too much about his salary. We have turned people away several times when they worry too much about their salary.

 

PS

The young man is now a manager for Expedias business in India. We obviously value things different.

Comments

I've tried a couple times to outsource work to India, but it never seems to end well. Starts out well enough, but then after a couple days/weeks, suddenly I find myself trying to get in touch with companies about work that hasn't been completed. Oh well.