Which is better for India job search, employed or unemployed?

Question

This is a pure curiosity question, inspired by questions I have seen here.

In the USA, it is better to stay with a job while searching for another one, and only resign with a definite written agreement on the new job. It maintains continuous income, and employers tend to favor employed applicants. A responsible employee will give a couple of weeks notice, but even that is often not enforceable.

I have seen the same advice given to people in India.

From my reading of discussions here, I see a couple of differences that may matter. Notice periods tend to be a lot longer, and a lot more strongly enforced. The employee needs a relieving letter from the old employer to start the new job, and any delay in getting that can delay the new job start.

Given that, I would expect there to be an advantage to having already quit, and being able to say "I can start working for you next week", rather than "I can start working for you in three months."

In the experience of people who have been involved in job searches in India, as employer or employee, which is better, to currently have a job or to be free to start work immediately?

Answer 1

I hail from India and my experience as been as follows

1. Most companies understand your need to have a long notice period. They enforce similar notice periods of "two months" or so and hence they understand the expectation. That said, they do encourage you to negotiate with your managers to reduce the notice period (which can be reduced if the manager agrees e.g. One of my reportees's requested me to reduce his notice period and since his deliverables in the project had been done and and all the knowledge transfers done, i was able to reduce it to one month and 10 days from the two months.. Also another thing to note is that if the person has a lot of accumulated leaves, he can offer to exchange those leaves for a reduced notice period (this again depends on the discretion of the company and the manager).

2. With regards to the job search, you are looked upon more favorably if you are currently employed : Unfortunately the stigma is that if you are not employed, you must have done something wrong and companies are cautious( Personal references count a great deal) about why you left your previous job. Obvious exceptions are when a lady is returning from maternity leave or someone is returning from a job role abroad or if a lady is returning after taking some time off after marriage. Also gaps exceeding one or two months are strongly scrutinized and hence lack of a job might raise a red flag (however incorrect it might be).

3. Employees in India are generally risk averse : What I mean by this is that employees generally will not give up their old job (irrespective of how bad it is until they have something lined up). Once they have two or three competing offers or one dream offer, thats when they generally put down their papers. There are exceptions like one of my colleagues who quit to become a freelancer but those cases are generally rare.

Answer 2

I'm not familiar with India.

In general for most positions except very high level ones from the employers point of view all else being equal an unemployed person is better. They start whenever you want them to, and you can negotiate from a stronger position.

So since it's basically a competition, from the employees point of view you negotiate from a stronger position if you're not desperate for a job, but you may lose out to someone who is desperate and will take less pay and jump when they're told to.

Personally when I hire, I want them to start when I'm ready, I'm not interested in waiting while they sort their lives out if I can help it. I would not wait three months for instance. I'd be unlikely to wait for 3 weeks if I could find someone else. But I'm not in India.