Layoffs: Fired professionals turn to recruiters and start-ups due to lack of jobs

As a wave of new job cuts swept through educational technologies sector, laid-off professionals and anxious employees of troubled firms are seeking placements. recruiting firms, and startups who are hiring are seeing a large influx of calls and resumes from ED professionals looking for new jobs as the sector’s problems are likely to escalate.

Employment consultants say that many are ready to take a pay cut of even 20-40%. At the senior level, it can grow even more, given the value of the ESOP.

“The education technology sector has not considered the possibility that everything could return to a physical model after the pandemic. Now they are suffering the consequences,” says Anshuman Das, managing partner at executive search firm Longhouse Consulting.

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He cites the case of a former top executive of the affected ED firm who received Rs 3 crore plus cash plus nearly three times the amount in ESOP. Initially unwilling to compromise on his salary, he is now willing to accept a cut.

Technology, sales and marketing, content, product developers, teachers, and contract personnel such as testers were affected. While the first two categories have comparatively more opportunities, teachers suffer the most.

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Many came in with 40-50% gains when the sector was booming and are now out of money, Das adds.

Pranshu Upadhyay, Regional Director and Head of Indian Technology Practice Michael Page, says applications coming from the edtech sector have increased by almost 60%. According to him, laid-off employees are ready to get another job with a pay cut of 30-35%.

“I believe that the education technology sector will have to take several steps in the interests of employees, such as re-employing laid-off employees, in order to protect their image in the future,” Upadhyay said.

It is estimated that edtech has seen about 7000 layoffs at companies such as Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Lido Learning and FrontRow as they see sharp declines after the peak of the pandemic as the world moved online. Companies serving the K12 segment are the most affected segment, while higher education is in the best position.

Edtech firms that are hiring and moving into more stable positions are also seeing a flood of professionals reaching out to them.

Mayank Kumar, co-founder of online higher education company upGrad, says that on average, he receives five to seven calls a day. upGrad plans to hire about 1,000 people, mostly in sales, over the next two quarters.

“There is rationalization in the crazy salaries that we have seen. People are ready to move for a fixed salary, even to go for a layoff,” he says.

Kanika Mendiratta, Senior Director of Human Resources at BrightChamps, said they are hiring and plan to increase the number of full-time employees, as well as increase the number of full-time faculty from 3,000 to 5,000 in the next 1-1.5 years.

“We’ve seen edtech people reach out to us, but having a domain in and of itself isn’t the deciding factor. Our hiring bar is very high,” she says.

While social media is full of offers to help such fired candidates, some recruiters are being cautious. “Good people were fired, as were the worst performers. We’re a bit wary because sometimes it’s hard to tell the good apples from the bad ones,” CXO edtech said.

Sanam Rawal, partner at Passion Connect, a strategic services division created by VC Blume Ventures to help the latter’s portfolio companies in areas such as HR advisory services, says they have been provided with a list of more than 500 people who have been laid off from major educational technologies. firms, and work with them on outplacement. Some of them have already found work. They are trying to place the rest in other portfolio companies that are hiring, in sectors like SaaS, agtech and hyper-local commerce.

“I don’t see significant pay cuts, except for some very high positions where they are compensated through their own capital,” Rawal says.