Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages to hire 800 people in 2024

HCCB has different programmes at different levels of hiring.

FMCG manufacturing major Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), the bottling arm of Coca-Cola, will hire 800 people next year.

The company hired 700-800 people last year and has almost met the target for this year. With 6,000 full-time employees, the firm reported an attrition of 13 percent and wants to plug that gap internally or externally.

Almost half of the hiring is around shopfloors, which are supply chain and manufacturing facilities. Another 40-45 percent will be commercial roles based in the market and help HCCB push its products. The remainder will be balanced out for enabling functions, such as Finance, HR, and IT, among others.

“Talent for us comes from multi-channels—50 percent from external and the same from internal. This build-and-buy model keeps the organisation fresh,” Gaurav Sharma, Chief People Officer, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, told Moneycontrol.

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HCCB has different programs at different levels of hiring. It has early career talent programs to recruit management, sales trainees, graduate engineering, and supply-chain operations trainees. Mid-level hiring happens mostly through search partners or directly through talent acquisition (TA) teams.

“We tell our TAs to look for people with the right mindsets, diverse viewpoints, and leadership traits of the individuals,” Sharma said.

Job hopping

Sharma has moved across five roles and worked under at least seven leaders. “Every time you work for a new leader, it's like a new role altogether with fresh accountability,” he said.

With job hopping becoming a trend among employees, especially at the junior level, HR leaders say critical experiences are important, whether a candidate gets it in one organisation or many.

“Critical experiences ensure that the projects or the charters that you were working on are taken to conclusion and you can close the loop. Only then can you showcase progress. And it takes at least one to two business cycles to showcase the impact you had on it,” Sharma said.

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If one moves before that, Sharma feels it will be difficult for the person to correlate how and what he/she wanted to do and what the person has contributed to the success of the organisation.

“Do not look at the tenure but do look at the impact you are having on that organisation. That impact can be felt in six, 12, 18, 24, or 36 months,” he said.