MUMBAI: Reliance ADAG’s Big 92.7 FM plans to gear up for the year ahead by strengthening its team and recruiting 800 to 1000 professionals.
Big FM senior VP HR Lancelot Cutinha told Radioandmusic.com, We were around 1000 strong and had to downsize last year as the quarterly appraisal came around the same time. The number of employees came down by 200-250 in the last six months. We have appointed around 150 professionals as replacements. We started recruiting them in the month of March and April and by the end of this fiscal, we would have completed hiring around 1000 people….
The station doesn’t require as much talent at the senior levels as it does at the entry level. With FM commercial radio’s phase three around the corner, the company is now shoring up on talent that will be needed to man its various stations after acquiring frequencies in the third phase.
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The ongoing economic slowdown has brought in rationalisation in salaries at the organisation and pay packages offered by Big FM this year have been brought down by 30-40 per cent as compared to the previous year, confirms Cutinha.
Big FM had declared a recruitment freeze since October and restarted the process of getting in new talent only in March. Big FM, claims Cutinha, is one of the few media companies following the system of quarterly appraisals. We also follow the post distribution matrix method where, after gauging the performance of the employees, we shave off the under performing 10 per cent as we are aggressively performance oriented….
Big FM has picked up fresh talent from ISB&M- Pune, MICA, Symbiosis-Pune, IIT- Mumbai, S P Jain- Mumbai, ACJ in Chennai, Institute of Journalism, Bangalore, Great Lakes institute in Chennai. It is the best time to upgrade our man power with great talent. When we started initially, it was difficult to get good talent as Big FM wasn’t a brand to attract people. We had to fill people in the organisation irrespective of their qualifications, especially in the smaller towns. But now, it is the time to upgrade talent across the network….
Big FM is focusing on picking up fresh talent from media institutes rather than poaching professionals from other media houses, says Cutinha. Although we have some senior positions being held by professionals from other media houses, we avoid doing so as they come with a baggage which can be an impediment and selling radio is not easy so we need the right people….
For recruiting the new talent, Big FM also recently undertook a study across their network about the present talent and gaps to be filled in. The basic requisites for getting placed in a radio station has increased with a balance of talent and the required qualification and a preferred MBA or a mass communication degree for programming profiles.
