In The Spotlight

Reengineering the Talent Delivery Engine 

Data Quest Article, 05/2010, Ganesh Natarajan

A few years ago, the entrepreneurial academician Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala in a presentation to Nasscom CEOs had presented a plan to get the best academicians in the country to come together for a few months to offer a finishing school program in three or four locations to students studying in the second tier engineering colleges in the country. This was a great idea which did not progress much because the slowdown that followed in global economies made business acquisition a higher priority than talent preparation but is worth considering today as the industry enters a new upturn.

The fourth quarter results and the outlook for the current financial year by the top thirty or so companies in the software sector have demonstrated the new confidence in the industry. Analyst estimates seem to be veering towards a consensus of over fifteen percent CAGR for Software Services exports in the next two to three years given the fact that the uptick in IT spending is expected to result in a four to five percent spending growth in the current year with a strong focus on offshore outsourcing - not very good news for job creation in the Western world but a sure trigger that the war for talent in India will start all over again.

The trends are already visible in the January to March quarter with most firms reporting high teen attrition levels and campus recruitments moving back to the glory days of 2007 and 2008. However the hard knocks endured by all of us in the last eighteen months or so would hopefully ensure that the excesses of the earlier era of hubris are not repeated. Companies won’t show up on campuses and make offers to third year engineering students and the search for talent sources will spread wider to tap more institutions in the country, a welcome departure from the past where there was concentration of talent search in the top few colleges in the country and the next tier were largely ignored.

The emergence of bridging programs offered by the private sector training industry and the willingness of both Universities and smaller State Governments to embrace the opportunity to develop employability skills in their graduates are also welcome trends in the industry this year. The Global Talent Track initiative that I have been involved with over the last year or so has shown how much student and employer expectations have evolved since the early days of the success of the software industry. In the nineties, the formal education sector was blissfully unaware of the next to create employable skills as they continued to focus on Data Structures and Computer Architecture rather than Computer Applications leaving the door open for private firms like NIIT and APTECH to build successful businesses through Dual Certification Programs. In this decade, the large numbers of BCAs and MCAs that graduate each year has redressed the early neglect by the formal sector but the poor quality of a vast majority of the graduates is only now being addressed by the interventions that colleges are now beginning to permit.

There are three reasons why the current trend towards partnerships – between potential employers, engineering and technology institutions and modern employability skills providers will flourish in the years to come. Companies have to tap new supply sources, particularly the Tier 2 engineering and technology colleges to feed their need for and more entry level recruits. IT and BPO firms have realized that they need talented skills in large numbers but would not want to incur the costs it takes to get the graduates of the next level colleges up to speed. A custom designed finishing school program providing both technical and soft skills delivered to students before they enter the portals of the organization, provides just in time talent ready to hit the ground running. For the academic institution a worthwhile bridging program is a blessing since it enables the placement averages to go up and hence, particularly in the case of the vast numbers of private engineering and BCA / MCA colleges, it enables them to attract more students to their institutions in the next academic year. And for the Governments in the lesser known states which have yet to see the positive impact of the IT industry boom, it enables investments to be attracted to the state if a talent pool is created. This is the reason why Punjab, Rajasthan, Orissa and in recent times even Jammu & Kashmir, have willingly embraced the Public Private partnership model and in times to come, most wannabe states and even countries like Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Nepal will need this proactive approach to join the outsourcing industry boom as it enters the next phase of growth !