“Midcareers.com is a unique placement service. I’m sure that this service will help middle career professionals to make a difference in their lives,” said Prof. Indira Parikh. She is currently the President of Foundation for Liberal And Management Education, Pune. Earlier she was Dean of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad from 2002 to 2005 and Professor in the Organizational Behaviour Area at the Institute. Prof Parikh was a faculty member at IIM-A for over 30 years. She has held the positions of the Chairperson of Alumni Relations and Activity Committee, Placement Committee, Postgraduate Diploma in Management Program (PGP) Fellow Programme in Management and Organizational Behaviour.

Some of the key highlights of midcareers.com:

• Exclusively for mid career professionals i.e. professionals with over 8 years of experience and in the middle management
• Career focus, not just jobs – career development is a continuous process, placement is an event. Focus is on both.
• A hybrid execution model – online web applications to relate to wide section of midpros and supported by offline delivery to ensure individual attention

Genesis of midcareers.com

The idea and the model has been built with the experience of G Ramu from interactions with a wide cross section of mid-career professionals while in corporates, later as a placement consultant and after exhaustive research on mid-career professionals.

While the genesis of the project was in the experiences narrated above, it was validated by a midcareers.com survey on 1000 plus IT professionals in early 2008.

G Ramu, Chief Architect, says, “Middle career’ professionals face two kinds of challenges as far as career is concerned. One, finding the right kind of job, which fits their profile – professional and personal. Two, addressing their career needs. Typically this includes addressingquestions like “Am I in the right kind of job?” “Am I moving in the right direction?” “How do I enhance my capabilities to have better growth?”

Midpro needs are unique

Mid Career Professionals (midpros) have unique requirements given their position in life and career. For instance, one significant aspect at professional level is alignment towards roles and not just skills. Their priorities and challenges in personal lives are also different from that in the earlier years. Understanding of their uniqueness has been built into fulfillment of their two needs – placement and career enrichment. He added that Confidentiality was a key concern for midpros and, in midcareers.com, companies are NOT given access to the midpros’ personal info database on site.

Career Enrichment services

www.midcareers.com has created services built on career models called Panch-Mantras (for personal and professional wellness) and Panch-Marg for career planning.

The career enrichment services offered are Career Guide – to help midpros discover their capabilities and strengths and plan their career accordingly; Career Counseling - to help align their career goals with their ability to pursue it; Career Tools – MDP calendar, resume building and Networth Assesor that improve the personal wellness and professional wellness; Thought Exchange – in-depth features on areas of the midpro’s interests. Many of these services are available through the web applications developed by midcareers.com.

Making placement an exciting experience for employers and midpros

“We understand the pain points of job seekers and employers. We seek to improve the process of placement for employers and midpros. The key challenge for both is finding the right fit. From the employer perspective – “Is this mid career professional the right fit for our organisation?” From the midpros perspective – “Is this role and organisation the right fit for me?” pointed out Ramu.

Midpro Organisation Role Fit

Elaborating on the highlight of their proposition, G Ramu, said, “The uniqueness of midpros demands a complete understanding of both the midpros and organisations, which need them. We have developed intelligent frameworks that capture the profile of the individual and similarly for the organisation to articulate the profile of the job. Further, midcareers.com has profiled roles played by mid career professionals across industries, and functions. This is a first-of-its-kind exhaustive profiling done to ensure a better midpro-organisation-role fit.” This profiling of roles will go a long way, apart from better placements, in helping mid career professionals plan their career.

The execution of placement is through a hybrid model – leveraging the reach of internet and the depth of a consultant’s understanding of placement needs. Employers will thus get to see only profiles which fit them best.

On the Business Side

Touching upon the business side, he detailed that investments are through internal accruals from operations of Yoganishta. The Investments will be in four areas: marketing & communications; technology; delivery and framework creation. Midcareers.com will see revenue generation from Q3 of 08-09 and enter into positive cash flow by Q1 of 09-10.

The outsourced placement is a billion dollar plus industry in India. About 10 to 20 % of an organisation’s workforce, depending on the industry, is made up of middle management professionals - managers and specialists. G Ramu sees significant business opportunity on placement of mid-career professionals. He says about midcareers.com “Placement is our business, career enrichment our mission, mid-career professionals our focus.”

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About Yoganishta

A 5-year-old placement services company based in Chennai, Yoganishta is headed by G Ramu. With an engineering degree from Institute of Technology, BHU and a MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, Ramu honed his capabilities through rich corporate experience in IT and non-IT sectors. In a span of five years Yoganishta has grown from a one-man organisation to a 40-member strong team with steady revenue growth of 40% year on year. Midcareers.com is a project born out of its deep understanding of the need fulfillment gaps in the mid-career segment.