Growing the pie!

A billion people
1,346 engineering colleges*
439,689 engineers/ year *

Yet, no-where is the proverbial war for talent as intense as it is in India. India's top major competitive advantage continues to remain talented workforce, but as companies grow and expand their operations both within India and overseas, getting the ‘right’ talent is becoming increasingly difficult for companies. This is true of both campus hires as well as lateral hiring!

The catch here is the term ‘right’. So really, is there a dearth of talent? The figures show that 40% of students get rejected on analytical skills, 20-30% on soft skills, and another (ONLY) 10% on technical skills, which leaves us with an employability percentage of around 20-30%. Astonishing but true!

Major IT giants (eg. Infosys, TCS, Wipro, GE, etc) and even the smaller ones joining the bandwagon – who so far focused on hiring (even ‘poaching’), training, and retaining people are now forced to work on expanding the talent pool rather than just going for a larger slice of the pie. True, they do have their ulterior motives to achieve, like the availability of trained manpower, prospective users/buyers, etc, none-the-less, these can ONLY be achieved if the desired benefits percolate to the targeted community.

Campus Connect program run by Infosys is a testimonial of the company’s efforts “to build a sustainable partnership with engineering education institutions for mutual benefit”. It also aims at evolving a model through which Infosys and engineering institutions can partner for competitiveness, enhance the pool of highly capable talent for growth requirements in Information Technology (IT) space.

Another recent example is VI Mantra 2008, an annual technical paper contest announced by National Instruments to nurture Innovation and Creativity in engineering education. It is a national level platform for Students and Researchers that enables them to showcase their innovative, graphical system-based design applications to the Indian industry & academia.

Several other firms – infact most of them, whether big or small, have also come forward with varied initiatives to help increase India’s competitiveness in the knowledge economy by – (1) bridging the gap between the industry and academia (2) creating an effective means of backward integration into the supply chain. However, methinks, in conjunction with growing the pie, we should also concentrate on making these jobs more rewarding and lucrative to curb the eventual, inevitable ‘brain-drain’ in the long term!

*(Source: AICTE)

- Namrta Batra

Owning a 'process'

"A process (latin processus: movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of changes of properties or attributes of an object or system." (Source: Wikipedia) Simply put, process is an over-used term, used to describe a set of defined tasks to achieve a desired goal.

So, if I were to use a flowchart to define it, I could say A -> (follows) B -> (follows) C.... -> (follows) Z. Remember, as kids how we could just learn the alphabets without having to apply ourselves. I mean, c'mon you don't have to think, re-think, analyze or calculate that what would follow 'A' this time, 'B' or 'D' or 'X'. It has to be the 'B' always. In a way, the alphabetic string may be a good layman analogy for process. But where is the damn need to think, re-think, analyze, calculate or apply yourself. Well, I just meant that since God has gifted us with some brains, I mean some of us with some brains, so why not make a use of it.

When applied to a business scenario, partciularly an IT industry, process is put in place to increase the efficiency an organization, and boy, not only can it make things faster, easier and more profitable, but it could just work wonders. If I may go back to the same layman example, then of-course the 'wonderful' pace with which you can recite the alphabets cannot even match-up to your calculation speed because it does not require you to think, re-think, analyze, calculate or apply yourself. An apt example is China, a thru' and thru' process-driven economy, with very limited resources, is turning out to be the World's Factory and a trade powerhouse. "Business processes are central to the functioning of an organization... Several companies intend to establish process-based organizations in order to cope with the increasing complexity and dynamics of the economic environment."

The rise in attrition rate is also emerging as a big concern for most companies today, hence the shift to the people-based organizations, and consequently more pampered employees :) Jokes apart, some organizations are actually coping-up with a horrendous 30 percent attrition rate. Imagine the immense cost incurred in hiring and training such a large number of employees. I am sure, the entire recruitment process would be a considerable chunk of their total outlay. So, a quick-fix to this problem is to just put a process in place, and get anyone - black, white or colored, to just follow it. Saves the employer from begging, pleading and pampering, and secures them from unforseen attrition challenges. And saves the employee from the need to think, re-think, analyze, calculate or apply himself so that he could 'chill matadi'.

There can also be varieties of thinking, eg, to think innovative, out-of-the box, etc. Well, these are no more than just corporate jargons, but by no means an easy task. Therefore, people rely upon and adore process-es to make life a little easy for them. And in the process they forget the most vital 'thinking' process itself and just follow the process like a slave. And it works, both for them and the organization. But where is the personal development then? Do they learn, and grow with the organization? Or is it more of a static growth for them, where the growth is only in terms of the number of process-es owned and the designation on the business-card.

So, I think we should really think and re-think if we want to own just the process or if we want to own the broader objective to be achieved by the process. My take is that owning the broader objective not only helps us apply ourselves to refine the process itself we go along, but also conditions us to change well in time if there is change in the objective.

- Namrta Batra