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Adventure Recruitment in ‘The Hindu’ Newspaper

November 18, 2008 in Company, News - Leave a reply

Date:17/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/ew/2008/11/17/stories/2008111750090300.htm

K Bharat Kumar

A tale of two strangers… … who found a home, and opportunities, in India.

It is not uncommon to see Americans, and people from other countries as well, attending IT conferences in India. But Joseph Cairns and Erhardt Christopher Otto were a surprise duo. The two not only live in India, but run their enterprises here. eWorld ran into them at the recent animation and gaming conference that Nasscom conducted in Hyderabad. What follows is their answer to the query: Why India?

Cairns lives in Bangalore a trend now common, but also owns and runs his company from there. Ask him about the Los Angeles address in his card and he says it’s another arm of the company.

Though he had been to India earlier, in his stints in animation recruiting from the US, his love story with this country started with meeting and marrying model Vithika Agarwal. That’s another reason why he moved to Bangalore. “We have family roots here.”

Cairns runs a recruitment firm, Adventure Recruitment, focused on recruiting those with software skills for the gaming markets in the US, UK and India. Surprised to find him focusing on such a narrow area? You’d be as surprised to find that in two years he has recruited about 50 people in the US for companies located there and made matches for about 70 in India. He ran two video game recruitment companies in California and sold his shares to move to India two years ago.

Does he facilitate people moving from one country to another? ”That’s a small part of our work.” Predominantly, he finds skills in one market for a company in that market.

But how does he manage to find people locally in the US, while being based out of India? Some online research happens but Adventure also does a lot of headhunting and networking. He says, “Most Indian recruiters use online databases and call candidates about jobs. No significant online database exists for the games business. We conduct extensive research to find out who the key people are and then call them to build long-term relationships to reach out to the top candidates who often aren’t looking for a move for a while.”

Adventure’s database has in excess 26,000 resumes of which it has interviewed 4,000 people.

He has not yet faced the impact of a slowdown in the US. A couple of clients involved in several business sectors taking a review of recruitment plans, and a few candidates jittery about shifting now, may be minor obstacles. According to Cairns, “We still have about 400 open positions for the games and animation industry that we are working on across the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, India, China and Australia.”

His biggest challenge? “Training my people.” He takes in those with neutralised accents and with experience from the call centre industry. “But, it’s so hard to find those who know about the animation and gaming market. When you are trying to place someone, you have to understand the context in which his skills find use.” For instance, the recruiter should be able to recognise that a candidate is probably overqualified for a position and be able to find another, higher position possibly elsewhere in the industry. That is reverse recruitment, where the client is now the individual and not the company. “This calls for a more consultative approach on part of my recruitment agents.” For that, they need to train hard.

He currently has about 30 people. In about a year, he wants to double revenues (absolute numbers are secret!) but would end up with a headcount between 40 and 50. “We are planning expansion into new international recruitment verticals. At the moment we have 18 people working the US and Canadian shift, six people working the European market and six working the Indian market.”

If he had a chance to start over again in India, he says his training of his employees is where he would focus harder. “I would write my training manuals and lay down processes well in advance. It’s not easy doing that and running the company and doing business development all simultaneously!”

For Cairns, the Brit-born from California, who now has three Indian meals daily, adapting comes easy. He doesn’t really complain about the weather or the traffic and the dust. “Earning in dollars and spending in rupees is nice. If we had fantastic roads and other infrastructure, it would come costly, maybe.” That’s probably a strain of the philosophical Indian in him!

Indian School of Gaming

The other non-Indian who sees a goldmine in our country is Otto. He has set up the Indian School of Gaming (ISOG) in Hyderabad.

His offering is as niche as, if not more than Cairns: trained software developers targeted at only the gaming industry.

Given that the animation and gaming market is to see a billion dollars in revenue by 2012, as per Ernst & Young estimates for Nasscom, Otto could well be nurturing a cash cow.

So why train only for the gaming industry? “Training for the animation industry is available from a lot of training institutes. Gaming is the opportunity for us.”

Earlier, he was Associate Dean and VP of Production at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Washington. He was also involved in setting up their Middle East Campus in gaming in Lebanon.

“We have vocational courses for those already in the software industry and want to move ahead. In addition, we have courses for freshers to fully prepare them a career in gaming software.”

Started only in January this year, ISOG has seen three batches of students pass out of the vocational course.

ISOG focuses on two types of engineering in the vocational programmes: quality assurance and 3D simulations programming for gaming. For the degree programmes the focus is on the math, programming, physics and sciences required to do this high-end form of computer programming and software production.What is the pre-requisite for getting into the course? Otto says, “We look at TOEFL scores.” The Test Of English as a Foreign Language requirement is a surprise, given that the skills development would be in software development and processes.

He explains, “Technical Design Documents are a critical part of the game programming process as they allow a publisher to feel confident that the development team, no matter what country they are in, can actually perform the task at hand. To convey this information requires a firm grasp of written English which is why we include a TOEFL component to our entrance examination.” For the vocational programme ISOG has an internally created mini-TOEFL which also satisifies this requirement, he says.

Given this stringent requirement, only 30 per cent of all candidates appearing for admission into the ISOG meet the standards. So far, 55 people have gone through his courses and even in that number, a small percentage has not met the bill. “But, each candidate who has passed our requirements has been placed in the gaming industry.”

But what is the total demand for game developers? “Currently there are over 10 game development studios in India that need high-end trained game development professionals. Worldwide this is a growth sector that will easily generate over $14 billion in software revenue alone for the calendar 2008 on both PC and console (and handheld) platforms.”

Does a slowdown dim ISOG’s prospects here? He says, “No. Our programmes help people transition from IT into the growing game engineering sectors.”

If he were to do this all over again, what would he do different? “I’d probably use more venture funding to target and attract specific areas in which talent could be found across more areas in the country. Right now, we evaluate anyone who comes and applies for admission. Also, better language skills are easily found in the metros but are not so prevalent in the smaller cities.”

bharatk@thehindu.co.in

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