India - Companies in India's telecom, pharmaceutical and consumer goods sectors are now looking to hire inexpensive talent who were laid off in the past six months to drive their expansion plans.

Placement firms have reported that companies in these growth-intensive sectors, which had slowed down hiring for the past months, have at least 25,000 vacancies now. These companies are using the pool of laid-off people to fill up "industry neutral" roles in functions like human resource, finance, system administration, marketing and sales.

Headhunters have estimated the availability of at least 700,000 talent who were previously laid-off from sectors such as IT, retail, banking and financial services and textiles. E Balaji, CEO of HR firm Ma Foi Management Consultant said, "Of this, at least 15% would be in white-collar roles, and are the prime target for low-cost talent acquisition."

This new recruitment focus is significantly different from the perceived notion that Indian companies have a mindset problem when it comes to hiring laid-off talent. "We do not differentiate among professionals who may have lost their job," said Vsevolod Rozanov, president and chief executive officer of telecom firm Sistema Shyam TeleServices (SSTL) told The Economic Times.

SSTL currently has 1,600 people and plans to increase its headcount to 3,000 by December. Rozanov added, "In areas like customer service, we are indeed looking for people from other sectors, and even the laid-off pool. We can always train them for our needs."

Companies in the mostly recession-proof pharmaceutical sector have said the shortage of good talent is not only an issue in research functions but also in sales. Hence, Prabir Jha, global head for human resources at Dr Reddy's Labs, feels getting the right mix of skills is a problem. "In such a case, the laid-off pool can throw up interesting profiles."