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Five reasons why Companies look to hire Indian Talent

• Tremendous Talent Pool: In 2022-23 alone, 5860 Engineering institutes absorbed 2369831aspiring engineers. The “too many engineers” problem in India translates to a very healthy talent pipeline for companies outside India.

A simple LinkedIn search with the below keywords for profile searches keeping the Location as India fetches the below number of results

1. Java: 23,40,000
2. Sales: 45,60,000
3. Marketing: 53,70,000

The above numbers showcasing the number of potential hires in India are astounding, mainly because only less than 6.5% of the Indian population is on LinkedIn. 

The Talent in India is aplenty that international companies can use to their advantage.

•  Expected Pay: Average salary candidates expect in India is much less, in some cases even less than 10% of their international counterparts

	India	US	UK
Java Developer	US$ 6259	US$ 93118	US$ 58717
Sales	US$ 3568	US$ 57789	US$ 39082
Marketing	US$ 3816	US$ 74464	US$ 39101

Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.in 

• Good penetration of English in India allows English-speaking employers to connect effectively with their remote workforce. 
  

Image Source: https://twitter.com/Stats_of_India/status/1514844191670824962/photo/1 

• Indians are hardworking: Coming from a conservative culture also makes Indians someone ready to listen and do more of what is expected. Also, they are more disciplined in general. 
• Indians are problem solvers, and they love doing it. Besides, Indians are also hungry to acquire new skills. Besides, India produces way too many engineers, which makes it very lucrative for foreign companies to recruit from India.

Can a foreign company hire employees in India?

Absolutely, Yes. Foreign companies can hire and employ Indian employees directly without the need of any 3rd party.

How do companies hire remote Indian Talent?

• Sourcing: Relevant candidates can be found via LinkedIn, Job-boards, OR via Recruitment Companies in India
• Screening & Coordination and engagement during the Interview process: It is better to keep all interview rounds as video interview rounds to ensure that there are no fake candidates in the process. Also, connecting with the candidate on LinkedIn is recommended to ensure that the candidate is exclusively employed with your organization.
• Employee Management: Companies can hire employees directly OR hire them on the payroll of an Indian company. 

Here’s a recruiting from India checklist 

• Make sure you set up a minimum of two interview rounds (a minimum of one functional interview and 1 HR discussion) with the candidate before making an offer. Make sure that the below questions are covered in the HR Interview.
  • How would the candidate manage the time-zone difference (if any and if required)
  • Infrastructure: In the case of Work from Home, it is best for HR to confirm that the candidate has the required resources Examples

1. Uninterrupted internet connection, 
2. Laptop as per the configuration required by the company in case the company is not providing laptop on joining, 
3. Others include comfortable seating (desk/chair), mobile, etc. 

• Holidays: It is best to discuss your company’s leave calendar and policy at the start. 
• Growth opportunities: The Indian market is booming (especially IT), and if HR can showcase company growth and potential project growth for the employee, it might have a very positive impact on the candidates’ performance
• Mode of salary transfer. It is imperative to communicate in advance about the mode of salary transfer and transfer deductions if any. The tax liability rests with the individual, and HR should ensure that it is also mentioned in the candidate’s offer letter.
• Open a line of communication: The HR interview is a fantastic place for HR to build a rapport with the candidate. Suppose the selected candidate was working with an Indian company earlier. In that case, HR must proactively communicate to the candidate that there might be cultural differences and differences in “how the company works”. Ask the candidate to expect that and make them comfortable to be able to communicate if they face any challenge. A 1, 3, 15, 30, and 90 days feedback could be an excellent idea in this scenario. 

Why do Indian employees prefer international organizations? 

 Disclaimer: Kindly note that the below points are blatant generalizations and might not hold in some scenarios. However, here are the top 4 reasons why Indian employees prefer international organizations

• Better pay: Indian candidates typically expect a 20-30% hike while switching to the Indian market. However, they may expect a 30-50% hike when switching Jobs to a company with an office outside India. 
• Work from Home: After covid, as more employers start calling employees back to the office, some of them prefer a Work from Home regime and can easily switch to an international organizations
• Increased Work-life balance: Some Indian companies expect impractical working hours, and their foreign counterparts offer a better work-life balance. 
• Exposure & future career opportunities: Working with international employers gives them better exposure and opens up opportunities for several other Jobs. 

When not to consider hiring a remote Indian employee

• When your complete team is from a particular geography, a manager from the same culture would understand the team better, and it might be counter-intuitive to hire a manager from a different culture altogether.
• Sales roles where relationships play a significant role: Every culture has nuances that might take some time for outsiders to adapt. For roles that require meeting customers in person, it might be efficient to hire a local candidate.
• In cases where proximity with the team can be more efficient, remote hires might not be the best option.

Have questions related to recruiting from India? Let us know in the comments below and we will be happy to answer them

On 27th February 2020, a fully autonomous Australian robot with no human on board used a pre-programmed route with remote supervision to undertake and complete its mission. Australia also won the Silver medal at the 2021 Robot Olympics six months later. In this event, the Australian robot used AI to autonomously explore, map, and discover models representing lost or injured people, suspicious backpacks, or phones while navigating harsh conditions. Clearly, Australia is at the forefront of robotics, autonomous systems, and AI research and development. Australia intends to use AI for security and defense applications and is also developing governance structures in line with Australian values, standards, ethical and legal frameworks. 

Kate Devitt & Damian Copeland have discussed this in their research paper titled “Australia’s Approach to AI Governance in Security and Defence” which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this Research

AI has enormous potential in Security and Defence applications. AI applications could threaten human rights in warfare and pose ethical and legal risks. This research paper outlines the approach of Australia to make use of AI in Security and Defense. 

The research paper also outlines that Australia’s Department of Defense recognizes AI as a priority for future developments. The research paper also outlined the definition of AI and explained the need for Artificial Intelligence for Australian Defense. 

Use of AI in Defense

As per the Australian government, Australia focuses on AI to build robotics capability, autonomous systems, precision-guided munitions, hypersonic weapons, and integrated air and missile defense systems, space and information warfare, and cyber capabilities. 

AI Governance in Australia  

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf 

AI Ethics Principles 

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf

The research paper also discusses in detail about

• Standards Australia’s Artificial Intelligence Standards Roadmap: Making Australia’s Voice Heard, Human Rights, and Australia’s action plan for AI,
• AI governance in Defense and Ethical AI statements across the Australian Navy, Army & Airforce,
• Human governance in Defense,
• Ethics in Australian Cybersecurity and Intelligence; and the Framework for Ethical AI in Defence, and
• Defense Data Strategy

Concerning the use of AI, it is helpful to establish 

• Responsibility: Who is responsible for AI?
• Governance – how is AI-controlled?
• Trust – how can AI be trusted?
• Law: How can AI be used lawfully?
• Traceability: How are the actions of AI recorded?

Conclusion: 

AI has tremendous potential for security and defense applications. Nations can use it to counter-terrorism, for border conflicts, and help them save armed personnel’s lives. Australia has identified the criticality of AI in defense and tried to build a framework around its application

In the words of the researchers

Australia is a leading AI nation with strong allies and partnerships. Australia has prioritised the development of robotics, AI, and autonomous systems to develop sovereign capability for the military. Australia commits to Article 36 reviews of all new means and method of warfare to ensure weapons and weapons systems are operated within acceptable systems of control. Additionally, Australia has undergone significant reviews of the risks of AI to human rights and within intelligence organisations and has committed to producing ethics guidelines and frameworks in Security and Defence (Department of Defence 2021a; Attorney-General’s Department 2020). Australia is committed to OECD’s values-based principles for the responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI as well as adopting a set of National AI ethics principles. While Australia has not adopted an AI governance framework specifically for Defence; Defence Science has published ‘A Method for Ethical AI in Defence’ (MEAID) technical report which includes a framework and pragmatic tools for managing ethical and legal risks for military applications of AI.

Source: Kate Devitt & Damian Copeland’s “Australia’s Approach to AI Governance in Security and Defence” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf 

Can machines beat humans in stock market trading? 

Machine Learning has been an area of great interest for traders because of the insane amount of money that could be made from the stock market. Arguably, Deep Reinforcement Learning can outperform human traders. However, most of the Deep Reinforcement Learning models built to date only consider the stock’s selling price minus the buying price to maximize profit. In a real-world scenario, transaction costs for buying, selling, and taxes affect the actual profit made by the investor. 

Shan Huang has discussed this approach in his research paper titled “Taxable Stock Trading with Deep Reinforcement Learning,” which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this research 

The researchers have demonstrated that tax ignorance could induce more than a 62% loss on the average portfolio returns. This research paper by Shan Huang aims to maximize net portfolio returns using Deep Reinforcement Learning while considering transaction and tax calculations. 

About the research 

The research paper mentions the mathematical details of the model built for Deep Reinforcement Learning. 

Assumptions

• The data set includes SPY’s (Exchange Traded Fund consisting of S&P’s top 500 companies) daily closed price and volumes from 13th November 2008 to 13th November 2018.
• Minimum time step dt = 1 representing one trading day, and hence the total trading days per year is 252.
• The tax regime is as mentioned below (in the US)
  • When a stock is held for more than one year, a 15% tax rate is applicable for capital gains.
  • When a stock is held for less than one year, a 25% tax rate is applicable for capital gains.
  • Investors can get a tax rebate to offset their capital gain for losses.
• The length of the trading period is set to be five years.
• A transaction cost of 0.1% is also included for more realistic calculations.

Research Data

The researchers have created a new OpenAI Gym environment where the observation in each timestep is SPY’s daily closed price, trading volume, averaged-basis, and average holding period. 

About the Model

In the words of the researchers

To represent the policy, we use the same default neural network architecture as PPO with fixed-length trajectory segments, which was a fully-connected MLP with two hidden layers of 64 and 64 tanh units respectively. The final output layer has a linear activation. policy and value function are estimated through separated network. The number of steps of interaction (state-action pairs) for the agent and the environment in each epoch is 5000 and the number of epochs is 50. The hyperparameter for clipping in the policy objective is chosen to be 0.2 and the GAE-Lambda is 0.97. The learning rate for policy and value function optimizer is 0.001 and 0.0003 respectively. If tax is not included in the model, the average expected return is 0.44 which seems quite promising. This considerable return is the result of exploiting price trending and frequently adjusting holding positions correspondingly, similar as the results of other AI platforms. However, this is not compelling since tax is heavily charged in a taxable year. Rather than ignoring taxes, the learning of stock trading should consider the effect of tax costs. We use PPO to train the stock trading policy in the environment with tax costs. The optimal stock trading policy in the model with taxes can achieve 0.13 average returns. To illustrate the suboptimality of the policy trained in the model without considering taxes, we apply this trained policy in the environment with tax costs, the average expected return drops to only 0.05.

Research Result: 

• The optimal stock trading policy with taxes can achieve 13% average returns in the model.
• Trained policy in the environment with tax costs, the average expected return drops to only 5%.
• This reduction is equal to 62%, which means that the returns shrunk by 62% upon consideration of taxes. 

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.12093.pdf

Conclusion: 

Investment in public markets could be a good way to invest in the world’s top companies. Public markets could be a fantastic way to invest the money as the return are, on average higher than the rates offered by the banks and other investment options. Trading stocks by reinforcement learning can guide and help agents increase their portfolio returns. Deep Reinforcement Learning Models built for stock market investment sometimes neglect the tax rates, which can massively impact the overall returns. This research paper by Shan Huang is an attempt to integrate tax calculations in the net return calculations with Deep Reinforcement Learning. The objective is to maximize net returns (after subtracting taxes) for stock investments which are the actual returns for an investor.

Source: Shan Huang’s “Taxable Stock Trading with Deep Reinforcement Learning” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.12093.pdf 

Four hundred eighty thousand deaths are recorded every year in the US alone due to smoking. Also, as per research, life expectancy for smokers is atleast ten years shorter than for non-smokers. In recent years, the use of e-cigarettes has been increasing rapidly for adolescents. Sometimes, e-cigarettes act as a gateway to cigarette use, which could be severe. This makes it important to predict the probability of adolescents smoking cigarettes in the future. 

Seung Joon Nam, Han Min Kim, Thomas Kang, and Cheol Young Park have discussed this in their research paper titled “The Study of Machine Learning Models in Predicting the Intention of Adolescents to Smoke Cigarettes”, which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this research

Consuming nicotine can cause cancer (lung cancer), cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, respiratory diseases, and perinatal diseases. These conditions are fatal for individuals. If an ML algorithm can predict the probability of individuals smoking cigarettes, efforts can be made to educate these individuals about the ill effects of smoking. This counseling could help adolescents avoid the ill effects of cigarette smoking. Thus, prediction can directly help individuals stay away from the path of smoking cigarettes and help save lives!

Research Objective

The main aim of this research is to

• Find the best-fitting model to predict smoking intention for individuals
• Create a website to help adolescents prevent e-cigarette.

About the Research 

The researchers evaluated different models such as Decision Tree, Gaussian NB, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting to predict the accuracy of ML models for accurately predicting the intention of Adolescents to smoke cigarettes. 

Research Result

Based on the experiments done by the researchers, they found the Gradient Boosting to be the most accurate way to predict smoking tendency in the future. The researchers have also published http://nyts.pythonanywhere.com for an anti-smoking campaign for teenagers. 

Conclusion

While healthcare has made a lot of progress in recent years, the number of medical conditions affecting teenagers has only increased. Often, these diseases are of our own making caused by our lifestyle choices. This research paper attempts to identify adolescents who are more likely to smoke and help adolescents make informed and healthier lifestyle choices. In the words of the researchers

E-cigarette use has increased among adolescents. This is a worldwide problem, because it has been stated in many researches mentioned in the introduction that e-cigarette use can cause future use of cigarettes. Since e-cigarette is a recent rising issue, there is little research done on this topic, compared to smoking cigarettes. Even among the researches done, there is a lack of researches implementing prediction models, which are more practical in preventing adolescents from using (e-)cigarettes. Thus, we researched using the 2018 NYTS data and developed multiple prediction models to predict a adolescent’s intention to smoke cigarette. The most accurate prediction model was Gradient Boosting Classifier with an overall accuracy of 93%. This model was applied in the website we designed to allow the public to input their information in respect to tobacco products, including e-cigarette, cigarette, and cigar. With this information, the algorithm can predict the respondee’s probability of future of smoking. This will help the public become more aware about certain factors in their lives and be attentive about their drug use or how their environment can affect their intention to smoke cigarettes. Further research could include a wider range of ages, since our research is mainly focused on adolescents rather than adults. In order to improve the accuracy of the prediction model, it is essential to increase the amount of data or choose better, more fitting, variables.

Source: Seung Joon Nam, Han Min Kim, Thomas Kang and Cheol Young Park’s “The Study of Machine Learning Models in Predicting the Intention of Adolescents to Smoke Cigarettes” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.12748v2.pdf 

You may cross many career paths, but you will have to narrow it down and find the best possible career. One has to prepare a good resume, then find the target company and wait for their reply. This task appears to be easy but is a bit hefty. So, a Recruitment consultant helps job seekers in finding, applying and preparing for the job. Because of their big network, recruiters can easily find a good job in no time. Every region has some recruiters, but one might not be able to decide which one to approach. This article will help in finding the best recruiters in Belgium. Known as “the Crossroads of Europe,” Belgium is located in northwest Europe bounded by the Netherlands in the north, Germany on the east, and France by the south and southwest. Belgium’s economy is dependent on services, transportation, trade and industry. Coal mining has declined in recent years. Belgium has always promoted trade and prosperity.

List of top recruitment consultancy

1. RGF Staffing Belgium (Google Rating- 4.6)

RGF Staffing provides the best solution to connect candidates and companies through their H.R. and staffing solutions. It provides a multi-brand ecosystem that encompasses different needs, ambitions and goals of the job seeker.

Website- https://www.rgfstaffing.be/en

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/rgf-staffing-belgium-nv/

2. Mavence (Google Rating-)

With decades of experience in public affairs across over a dozen countries, Mavens are experienced practitioners in their own way, making them uniquely attuned not only to the company’s talent needs but to the far-reaching value that the company’s success brings to the business as a whole. Mavens serve as a trusted guide. With each employee working exclusively on a dedicated portfolio of a candidate, one can be sure that they will leave no stone unturned and will provide you with a dedicated and personal touch every step of the way. They offer a full range of executive search and recruitment services for associations, corporations, consultancies, NGOs, think-tanks, law firms, regional and diplomatic offices, and intergovernmental groups, including 360-degree search and place, Screening and shortlisting, Talent management and assessment, Interim recruitment, Leadership and Career coaching. 

Website- www.mavence.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/european-affairs-recruitment-specialists-ears-

3. Signium

Started in the 1950s, Signium is one of the world’s leading executive search and leadership consulting firms with offices across the globe. They not only focus on the qualifications and background of an individual candidate but also explore the culture fit and client values. With their partner-led approach, they not only advise candidates but also support in developing their skills. 

Website- http://www.signium.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/signium/about/

4. Generations Recruitment (Google Rating- 5.0)

A Brussels based recruitment agency, specialising in Marketing & Sales profiles, Generations Recruitment has always lived up to the expectation of the job seeker by ensuring more ethical and diversified recruitment. They have recruited more than 70 companies in many different sectors such as the food, drink, home-care, consumer electronics, including Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Orange, The Swatch Group.

Website- https://www.generationsrecruitment.com 

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/generationsrecruitment/

5. Amrop

With over 64 offices in 53 countries, Amrop is one of the world’s largest retained executive search partnerships, offering a range of Leadership and Board Services. With their Context Driven approach to executive search encompassing shared values, standards, policies and procedures, Amrop advises the world’s most dynamic, agile organizations on identifying and positioning candidates.

Website- http://www.amrop.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/amrop/about/

6. Pauwels Consulting (Google Rating- 4.7)

Pauwels Consulting is a profound Belgian consultancy firm with 650+ experts in engineering, life sciences and I.T. They recruit, manage and execute projects for leading organizations in and beyond Belgium, including France and the Netherlands.

Website- https://www.pauwelsconsulting.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/pauwels-consulting/

7. Robert Half (Google Rating- 3.6)

Founded in 1948, Robert Half pioneered the concept of professional recruitment services. Today, they offer a full spectrum of specialized staffing and consulting solutions. Along with helping candidates find career opportunities where they can fit and thrive. In February 2019, Robert Half was named first in our industry on FORTUNE magazine’s list of “World’s Most Admired Companies®”. Robert Half was also selected for Bloomberg’s 2019 Gender-Equality Index, is featured on Barron’s list of the “100 Most Sustainable U.S. Companies,” is among Forbes’. 

Website- https://www.roberthalf.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/robert-half-international/

8. Real Staffing (Google Rating- 5.0)

Working across Europe, the U.S. and Asia, Pac Real Staffing is one of the world’s most extensive pharma, biotech and medical devices recruiters and has one of the largest networks of specialist recruiters globally. They help candidates find the new job opportunities which they’re looking for and help the candidates to move to the next step in their career.

Website- http://www.realstaffing.com

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/real-staffing-group/about/

9. Personnel Search (Google Rating- 4.2)

Appreciating challenging collaboration with candidates and clients, Personnel Search is a passionate mobilizer in the world of recruitment. Personnel Search was founded in 2002 with a distinctive vision and structure aimed at achieving three fundamental goals: Quality, Speed & Satisfaction.

Website- https://www.personnelsearch.nl

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/personnel-search/about/

Conclusion

With rich chocolate & waffles, Belgium is a sweet spot for every recruiter and job seeker with plenty of opportunities.

Finding a job is not an easy task right now. One has to plan a lot and work on self to develop a skill that is required for the 

job. You may cross many career paths, but you will have to narrow it down and find the best possible career. One has to prepare a good resume, then find the target company and wait for their reply. This task appears to be easy but is a bit hefty. So, a Recruitment consultant helps job seekers in finding, applying and preparing for the Job. Because of their big network, recruiters can easily find an excellent job in no time. Every region has some recruiters, but one might not be able to decide which one to approach. This article will help in finding the best recruiters in Iceland. It is a European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active.

The domestic economy is primarily service-based. The wholesale, retail, repair, real estate, and financial segments account for nearly 30% of all workers. About 7% work in the agriculture and fishing industries while about 9% work in manufacturing. Despite most employees working in the service industry, Iceland is a thriving producer of goods for export. Along with fish and software services, their exports include aluminium, pharmaceuticals and medical products, petroleum and Petroproducts, and food processing equipment, etc.

List of top recruitment consultancy

1. Hagvangur (Google Rating- 5.0)

Founded in 1971, Hagvangur is one of the oldest consulting companies in the country. Initially, they worked in the field of operational consulting. Later in 1976, they went on to begin recruitment services. In 1998, the company merged with the Coopers & Lybrand Auditing Center and the name PricewaterhouseCoopers was adopted. During the year 2002/2003, a turning point came when the activities that belonged to the recruitment service were sold to the current owners, Katrín S. Óladóttir, the current managing director and Þóris Á. Þorvarðarson, Chairman of the Board and Recruitment Manager of the company. From 2005, the company has systematically expanded its field of work, and the company’s consulting now covers most areas of human resource management. Hagvangur is an excellent option for any job seeker because they specialize in professional recruitment. With such a great experience of recruitment, they can quickly get you your dream job.

Website- https://hagvangur.is/hagvangur/en/

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/hagvangur/

2. Jobs in Iceland (Google Rating- )

Their main objective is to provide the best service available to both customers and employees. They believe in measuring their success among people because their most important goal is to ensure that employees are happy and content during their work and stay in Iceland. Moreover, this is the kind of support every job seeker needs.

Website- https://www.jobsiniceland.is/

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/%C3%ADslensk-verkmi%C3%B0lun/

3. Job (Google Rating- )

Job connects companies and individuals in a simple, fast and convenient way. Individuals can find the dream job at the dream company through Job. It’s effortless to sign up. One can keep track of everything related to applications and the company’s response to them.

Website- https://atvinna.frettabladid.is/

4. Swapp Agency (Google Rating- 5.0)

Swapp Agency is located in Reykjavik, Iceland. Founded by two entrepreneurs in 2016, they aim to help individuals find a job in Iceland and also match companies with great staff that suits their requirements and needs. Swapp Agency has grown and adapted alongside the evolution of the market and now provides services to job seekers all over the world. 

Website- https://swappagency.com/

Conclusion

With a high standard of living, Iceland proves to be good for local people who can afford the expenses.