From Nainital to Rudrapur, why MakeMyTrip is hiring more from tier 2, 3 towns

MakeMyTrip is expanding its talent search to smaller towns.

Offbeat locations have moved from travel itineraries to hiring grounds, as travel companies such as MakeMyTrip cast their net wide for fresh talent.

Why is MakeMyTrip hiring more from smaller towns?

For more diversity and better stability of the workforce, Yuvaraj Srivastava, Group Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO), MakeMyTrip, told Moneycontrol.

"Industry has seen attrition of around 15 to 20 percent in the tech talent. We have seen the great resignation era. Hence, we decided that we will create a platform wherein we will announce our campus positions across the country," he said.

They found that employees from lesser known campuses tend to show higher loyalty and resilience, viewing their organisation as a vital learning ground, Srivastava said. They tend to stay longer in an organisation. In contrast, those from top-tier school are often wired differently, with more ambitious career aspirations.

If an organisation has people only from colleges in Tier 1 cities, they will end up hiring people from a similar market, which will have a similar trend of attrition.

Srivastava said the travel technology platform’s attrition rate is around 17-19 percent for software developers, lower than the broader market’s 20-25 percent.

He attributes this success to a hiring strategy that looks beyond metros, with 60 percent of the company's employees coming from tier 2 and 3 cities.

"There are 30-35 percent people who are categorised as top talent and there would not be more than 8 to 10 percent attrition, which is lower than market average," the CHRO said.

As a travel platform, a wider hiring strategy also helps in testing products, Srivastava said. "Having people in the organisation who represent different geographies, demographics and states, helps us make our products richer," he said.

How is MakeMyTrip recruiting more talent from smaller towns?

For the past many years, MakeMyTrip was going to around 25 colleges to hire 100-150 engineers, coders, and software developers. This year, it came up with a plan of a nationwide hunt under MyLaunchpad and announced campus positions across the country.

"We got around 25,000 applications from almost 650 institutes across 38 states and more than 5,500 pincodes got covered. This showed us that talent has no pincode. We made an offer to around 75 to 100 students through this process and they will join us next year," Srivastava said.

Almost 50 percent of the students who were made an offer were from institutes the company would not have visited had it stuck to its old ways. "Talent cuts across geographies and India is a diverse country. For engineers, we will continue to do this," Srivastava said.

The company is replicating the MyLaunchpad strategy for sales team hirings.

The company is tapping into MBA talent through a business challenge called "Young Turks." Aspiring candidates apply in teams of three to solve a case study. The top five teams are flown to Delhi to present their solutions to the company's founders and leadership team. Those who do well are made a job offer the same day.

"The Young Turks business challenge has expanded search from 10 to 50 campuses," Srivastava said.

Through these initiatives, he expects to hire between 100 and 150 people from campuses that were not previously part of the company’s recruitment process.

"We continue to have people from Bengaluru and Chennai but we are also hiring people from places like Allahabad, Rudrapur, Nainital, among others," he said.

How AI is helping expand the hiring drive?

Typically, MakeMyTrip goes to campuses identified with the help of placement committees of different institutes. "For instance, if had to go to NIT Allahabad (Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad), I would write a mail to the placement committee there and say that we are coming to hire at the campus on so and so date," Srivastava said.

This year, the company launched a social media campaign, giving access to its careers website and used artificial intelligence (AI) to manage the hiring process at scale.

"If we wouldn't have used AI effectively, we wouldn't have been able to really do it. Our first level of filter was basically parameters around educational qualification, percentages scored and some of the skill sets right. Those were also done through AI wherein AI had read the CVs (curriculum vitae)," he said.

For the second level of selection, which was video interviews, MakeMyTrip used AI persona aka virtual avatar.

"Our initial funnelling had a lot to do with the use of AI," the CHRO said.

The company also tested the Gen AI curiosity quotient of the candidates. "I think it was an interesting way to hire a workforce for tomorrow," Srivastava said.

"As the talent war heats up, we didn't want to miss this opportunity of ensuring that we cast our net wider and get the best of talent from everywhere," he said.