Challenges of Hiring Tech Teams in a Tier-2 City

by Ranjeet Kumar SEO and Digital Marketer

Hiring candidates for technical roles in a Tier-2 city can be challenging. The challenges lie with the expectations of both the candidates and the hiring firms

Challenges with hiring tech teams in a tier-2 city

With over 4200 AICTE-approved Engineering Colleges across India, producing about 15 lakh Engineering Graduates every year, the availability of good tech talent has never been an issue for IT Companies in India. And with the country’s economy growing, IT Companies are hiring 10-11% more Tech Teams every year.

For companies located in Metropolitan or other tier-1 cities, the challenges with hiring do not lie in receiving a good number of applications, but selecting the best talent from the huge piles of applications made. On the other hand, technical recruiters in tier-2 cities face challenges on both fronts.

Let’s divide the pool of candidates into two categories: Local and Outstationed.

Local Candidates

There are some obvious and some unique challenges with local, tier-2 city candidates.

Being brought up in a small city, they have grown up dreaming to live in a bigger city some day. These candidates and their parents see moving to a bigger city as a level up in the game of life. Hence, they seldom make any effort to explore good employment opportunities within their city or are even interested, while looking for a job change, if approached by a local recruiter.
Charms of bigger cities, as portrayed in our movies and other influential media, leave an everlasting impression on the minds of these aspirants. That makes an offer from a tier-1 city always more attractive, irrespective of the learning opportunities one may get in a local company. Not to forget, a bigger city means a higher pay package too.
People who look for on-site opportunities outside India prefer to join only MNCs, even if it results in a career gap, and we know the majority of the MNCs are located in tier-1 cities. Whereas, good IT companies operating in tier-2 cities offer equally good on-site opportunities. Yes, the frequency might be lower, but one’s probability of getting selected for the same is higher, as generally the company size would be smaller.
Cringe alert! While recruiting Freshers from the local colleges, many times Recruiters are left with the majority of students who could not get any campus placement, do not possess a strong academic background, are not fresh graduates, or compelled to live and stay with their family for miscellaneous reasons. No good reason to hire.
For recruiters, the smaller population of these cities also makes the local talent pipeline smaller, which forces them to look out for suitable candidates in other cities. Read full blog here - Challenges of Hiring Tech Teams in a Tier-2 City