Voilà! We have stepped into the 21st century and we have come a long, long way. The country is surging ahead in all fronts like never before. India has a very strong global presence and is in the reckoning for global economic supremacy and is expected to be a superpower in the years to come.
Well, let’s start off by asking a simple but thought-provoking question, “How did we achieve this? How did we get this far? Where do we go from here? And how will we be poised a few years from now?”
With the Great Indian Economic boom, India’s GDP is growing at a rapid pace, so the rising economy along with the steep rise in demands for the skilled and the talented is pushing recruiters and various HR departments to no end and they’re resorting to extreme measures/methods to recruit the right talent pool.
The primary pre-requisite is “the right person for the right job”. This talent shortage is definitely hurting and haunting the Indian job scenario. The bare and basic truth is quite brutal, that there is a serious Shortage of Employable Talent in India.
I have cited below a few studies and researches done by different organizations:
According to the management and consulting firm, McKinsey, Indian factories will need 73 million workers by 2015, 50% more than today. The IT sector is on a hiring spree, targeting an intake of 3 lakh people in 2006.
The National Association of Software and Services Companies, Nasscom-McKinsey Report predicts India will confront a huge shortage of skilled workers in the next decade, particularly in the BPO industry.
According to a 2005 McKinsey study, only 25 per cent of our engineering graduates, 15 per cent of our finance and accounting professionals and 10 per cent of professionals with any kind of degrees, in India, are suitable for working in multinational companies.
In the next 2 years, India needs to find 500 to 750 CEOs and 10,000 functional leaders in various capacities.
A recent study conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has revealed that Human Resource (HR) is the biggest challenge faced by India especially at the managerial, production and marketing levels due to the widening demand-supply gap.
Corporate India will create 10 lakh new jobs this year. If that is the demand over the next two years for business leaders, one can imagine the humongous demand at middle and lower levels.
What are the reasons for this sudden and huge disparity in finding the right talent in a country of teeming millions?
According to a Nasscom report, “Only one in four engineering graduates in India is employable, based on their technical skills, English fluency, teamwork and presentation skills and of the 4 lakh odd engineering graduates, who graduate each year, only about 20% is good enough for India Inc. Apart from a few top educational institutions, the quality of education has dropped affecting the quality of the to-be graduates and thus their employable abilities also suffer.”
So keeping in view our greater goals, our booming economy and with India being recognized as a Global market for virtually all domains, our visions for a greater India should be such that not only is India a place for cost-effective, cheap labor but also a place where the talent pool is inimitable.
To ensure this certain steps could be undertaken:
Bridge the Academia-Industry gap and create a constant interaction between the two. One should evolve as an extension of the other. Various corporates are into this in a big way.
Making significant and effective changes to the curriculum to make it more practical and industry-friendly. Today this measure is definitely being implemented in various streams and courses.
Coach students using e-learning as an effective mode for bridging the Academia-Industry gap.
Introduce more industry-oriented courses, so that the transition to the corporate world is easy.
Introduce soft-skills training at college levels like helping students to cope with job hunting, facing interviews, presentation, and honing good language skills etc.
Shift the focus from ‘Tier A’ cities to ‘Tier B’ cities, where there is definitely a huge and untapped talent pool whose skill sets have to be honed and developed.
Once a person is gainfully employed, retention and job satisfaction is the next important factor. For this, constant mentoring, good and substantial salary hikes, talent recognition, constant training, upgrading job skills, mapping professional with personal terms etc. should be undertaken to retain the talent pool.
We have seen what India was, is and grooming-to-be. So in our quest for burgeoning heights and global recognition in all fronts, we have to ensure and take good measures so that our country’s talent pool will live up to the name “Brand India.”
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