India lost favour with overseas pros during pandemic

India’s ability to attract overseas professionals may have declined amid the Covid-19 pandemic as several potential recruits have turned down offers to work in the country citing concerns over issues such as the local healthcare system, high pollution and safety, said search consultants and company executives.
This comes at a time when several sectors such as electric vehicles (EVs), battery, solar and renewable energy, and aviation, are looking for global talent to overcome the shortage of local manpower.

According to search experts, the offer acceptance rate among overseas professionals is about 25% and it takes almost double the time to close a senior expat job vacancy, in five-six months, compared to two-three months for a local CXO-level hire.

“India is not in the same league as some other nations for expat preference. In fact, expats who are considering coming to India also do a lot of due diligence before they take up an offer,” said Suresh Raina, partner at global leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles. “To improve the odds, the role has to be exceptionally rich or the compensation really attractive. Even a small country like Thailand is a more preferred destination for many than India.”

Large Indian conglomerates and leading companies such as Mahindra and Tata Motors — which have global centres in Europe and the US for design and research and development (R&D) — are appointing local talent and setting up global satellite units so that expats can travel to India whenever needed.

“It makes little sense to hire expats in our Indian operations and pay top dollars as we have built a robust internal talent pipeline here,” the chief human resources officer (CHRO) of a leading automobile company, which had several expats in senior leadership roles till a few years ago, said on condition of anonymity.

The Aditya Birla Group and Hero MotoCorp, which have a few expats in India, have largely placed senior leaders in their overseas operations.

Last month, IndiGo announced the appointment of Pieter Elbers (the president of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines) as its new CEO.

Air India’s new owner, Tata Group, has brought in Campbell Wilson as the CEO.

“The Indian aviation sector has witnessed exponential growth in scale and complexity over the last decade. It now faces a dearth of talent across functions which can deliver at this scale while competing with global behemoths. Expats are able to meet the gaps,” said Satyendra Pandey, managing partner at the aviation advisory firm AT-TV.

In turn, the sector offers phenomenal exposure to overseas professionals in a growth market with a large tech savvy traveller base and rapidly improving infrastructure. “What attracts expats here is the pay, level of exposure and control, the latter two being far greater than they would get in other geographies such as the Middle East,” said Pandey.

Geopolitically too, the next few years belong to Asia, with India clearly poised to be a leader, said Pandey, adding that hence the aviation sector in India is a promising proposition.

However, expats conduct their own extensive due diligence before accepting an India offer. This includes political risk assessment, company balance sheet analysis, corporate governance issues, board composition, culture, technology and market specific risk.

Many expats find the weather, school system and air quality challenging and opt not to bring families. “In the last two years there has been a lot of negative publicity about things such as the healthcare system as well, ” said Pandey.

However, some like Navnit Singh, regional managing director of India for Korn Ferry, said India offers a great opportunity. “I am not seeing any negative perception about India among expats. The uncertainty that we had seen during the pandemic is also going away now. In fact, the depth and richness of the role is something that attracts many people to do an India stint in their career,” said Singh.

Santrupt Misra, director, group HR, Aditya Birla Group, said, “While people are making more careful choices about location, period of engagement, etc., I don’t think Covid has fundamentally changed mobility of leadership talent in general, including expats.”

Schneider Electric has many senior global executives who moved into India in the past one year. “We have a lot of R&D, manufacturing, IT related work coming to India, and last year alone we have created AI, analytics and cybersecurity global hubs in India… we have not seen any hesitation among expats to make the shift. In fact, India is perceived as a growing market which can offer depth and richness of roles and immense opportunity to learn,” said Rachna Mukherjee, CHRO India and South Asia, Schneider Electric India.

The need for expat talent shifted from IT, services and consulting companies a few years ago to industrial and automobile sector companies. “The next wave that is coming in is from companies in sectors such as renewables, solar, battery, EVs and aviation, where there is a lack of talent locally,” said Singh of Korn Ferry.

One of the major drivers prompting companies in India to step up their search for overseas professionals is the war for technical talent in certain areas. Leading two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp has on-boarded expats in senior roles as it increases focus on EV, electronics, AI, cloud, engine operations and supply chain. It appointed Mike Clake as chief operating officer in November 2020. However, chief technology officer Markus Braunsperger, who decided to move back to Europe, was replaced by Arun Jaura in December 2021.

Similar is the case with Tata Motors, which is open to exploring overseas talent for the EV and engineering functions. The company appointed Thomas Flack as chief purchasing officer and Fernando Rodriguez as head of PV engineering, Engineering Research Centre, a few years ago. “As a global organisation, at Tata Motors, we attract the best talent in all the markets in which we operate. We have over 350 employees working in our design and engineering centres in the UK and Italy,” said Ravindra Kumar, chief human resources officer, Tata Motors.

Amid the pandemic, companies are coming up with various flexible work models to attract expat talent.

“One such model is four weeks of work from India, then fly to their home location and work from home for two weeks. Then take a week’s break with family and come back. An increasing number of Indian companies are receptive to such models where a person can spend more time with family and the family does not have to relocate to India. Cost of travel is taken care of by the company,” said Raina of Heidrick & Struggles.