Financial sector prefers temping

A mid-sized new private sector bank is hiring around 1,400 sales personnel on a temporary basis to expand its reach to 250 new cities and towns.

Temporary staffing (temping in the staffing parlance) has become the catch-phrase among new private sector banks, foreign banks and general insurance companies as they seek to tap the expanding market outside the metros. It is estimated about one lakh temporary sales personnel would be hired by banks and general insurers by the end of 2007.

"The pace of temporary hiring in the financial services sector has doubled now. Earlier, we would recruit about 3,000 people every month for placement with various financial institutions. That has now increased to about 6,000," said Deep Mukherjee, vice-president at TeamLease Services, a staffing solutions company which has placed about 70,000 people on temporary postings, half of them in the financial services sector.

Banks also increasingly prefer temping over direct sales agents as they have greater control over temporary staff. Earlier, temping was used to a great extent for back-office jobs, but now is finding greater adoption for core sales functions. General insurers employ temporary staff instead of appointing agents to sell policies.

Banks in expansion mode are also taking to temping to ensure they are not saddled with inefficient staff. They are signing agreements with staffing solutions providers committing themselves to taking on their regular rolls up to 50 per cent of the temporary staff deployed.

"We are now seeing a trend whereby temporary hires have an opportunity to get placed with reputed employers," Mukherjee said.

Temping solutions providers are witnessing huge manpower demand at different levels in the Tier II and Tier III cities. Demand for specific sales job profiles such as home loan salesman or car loan sales executive is on the rise and employers prefer to hire local residents who are more aware of the local conditions. Temping is expected to take the total headcount at TeamLease to one lakh by the end of 2007.