MakeMyTrip Transforms Engagement With Prospective Talent Across The Country

In its endeavour to up the ante on the talent acquisition, India's online travel company, MakeMyTrip, has unveiled a comprehensive approach to engage and harness campus talent nationwide. This innovative strategy is a testament to the company's commitment to scouting excellence beyond traditional paradigms and reaching out to the students from the various parts of India, including the premier institutions and promising academic establishments in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

Central to MakeMyTrip's strategy is a pyramid-like framework with a multi-tiered approach to talent engagement. At the foundational layer, the company emphasises its outreach to every nook and corner of the diverse Indian landscape. The goal is to make the brand synonymous with limitless opportunities, ensuring that every aspiring professional, irrespective of their geographical location, perceives the company positively while mapping their career aspirations. This move symbolises the company's drive for inclusivity and its vision to serve a diverse customer base through a talent pool as diverse as the nation.

“A diverse workforce brings together a spectrum of perspectives, experiences and backgrounds, fostering creativity and innovation. Such diversity often leads to more comprehensive problem-solving and more resilient business strategies especially for a business like ours that serves all of India every single day. It mirrors our customers and our varied user base, ensuring a holistic understanding of customer needs,” shared Yuvaraj Srivastava, group chief human resources officer, MakeMyTrip. 

Strengthening this foundation is the intermediate tier that focuses on depth of outreach. While established institutions remain a focus for specialised hiring, MakeMyTrip is elevating its engagement with campuses across the spectrum. By introducing real-world case study competitions, the company is not only looking to spot top-tier talent but also to resonate with their aspirations, ensuring a mutual alignment of passion, strengths and organisational roles. 

“Continued collaboration with educational institutions is of paramount importance to be able to identify the right talent. It creates a seamless bridge between academia and industry, ensuring that students are better prepared for real-world challenges, having been exposed to contemporary business scenarios during their formative years. This symbiotic relationship allows businesses to tap into fresh perspectives and innovative ideas that students bring from their academic learnings. It ensures we have early access to a talent pool, which can be nurtured for future roles,” added Srivastava. 

The apex of this strategy involves a transparent and immersive showcase of MakeMyTrip's internal workings. Potential hires are offered an insightful glimpse through "A Day in the Life of" experiences, shedding light on the organisation's vibrancy, roles and ethos. This initiative aims to bridge the gap between expectation and reality, allowing candidates to visualise a future within the company’s ecosystem.

As part of this holistic approach, the company introduced its ‘Limitless with MakeMyTrip – Reimagine Travel’ campaign. More than just a competition, it was a call to students from non-tech and tech campuses, including those from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, to manifest their understanding of the travel ecosystem and creativity in problem-solving. Students were given the challenge to create a 90-second social media reel, under categories such as ‘Unseen India’, ‘India on a Budget’ and ‘Responsible India’. The impressive response, featuring over 4,700 entries, underscores the campaign's success in tapping into the latent potential and enthusiasm of India's youth. Maximum entries have been received from management campus like MDI, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, NMIMS, SCMHRD, IMT and technology campuses like IIT Mumbai, PES, Thapar and IIT Patna to name a few. 

Reflecting on this strategic shift, Srivastava said, “By challenging students to create 90-second social media reels under categories like ‘Unseen India’, ‘India on a Budget’ and ‘Responsible India’, the campaign pushes candidates to think creatively, research diligently and present effectively. This exercise helps in honing their analytical, creative and communication skills. It provides them with a platform to understand the travel ecosystem better and apply their academic knowledge in real-world contexts.”

Despite the declining hiring trends observed across campuses nationwide, MakeMyTrip remains proactive by leveraging this situation as an opportunity to strengthen its campus engagement and brand presence.