Uma Ganesh

With the final year examinations round the corner in most universities in the country and a muted campus placement process experienced by most of them, the big question that is doing the rounds of the campuses is whether they are reading the IT industry well and what are the trends they got to watch out for in order to continue to receive the patronage of the IT companies, the biggest recruiters on the campus. While the number of engineers graduating in 12-13 has crossed five lakh, the quality of the output continues to be a matter of concern with not more than 25% of them being employable as per Nasscom-McKinsey Report, 2010.

With the IT industry estimated to grow at the rate of 11-14% in 2012-13, several companies have adopted a cautious approach to making offers to the students on campus this year. For the last two years in a row, the campus hiring of engineering graduates by most IT companies has been same or lower than the previous year with science graduates beginning to get more than usual attention. There are multiple reasons for this development and it would be relevant to analyse the background leading to the current scenario.

The global economic meltdown impacting the spend on IT services has led the companies to stretch the on boarding processes for 2011-12 campus hires right upto June or July of 2013. Due to the availability of this talent pool, 2013-14 campus offers have been cautious and conservative. With attrition rate going down to single digit for most companies and with access to talent pool as required round the year instead of creating the bench during June-September period, companies have started rethinking the recruitment needs from the campuses.

Further, with the challenges in predicting the size and type of business deals that are likely to be won and the emergence of myriad new technologies and gadgets for which software services have to be developed, employers are beginning to find just-in-time models of talent resourcing more beneficial. Companies are using a judicious combination of upgrading the existing workforce with hiring of new talent. Only the top 500 campuses get companies on their campuses in view of the emerging scenario and thus the rest of the 3,000 plus engineering colleges and their students are left with hardly any option.

In fact, many companies that continue to make campus offers are also beginning to question the need to invest in three months training upon onboarding of the candidates and are considering to shift the responsibility to the students or the colleges for being fully proficient in specified technology areas and thereby focus their training towards areas related to organisation?s processes and project needs thus reducing the duration of training substantially. This trend is likely to continue in the near term as well and therefore it is critical for universities and policy makers in the government to consider some urgent measures to mitigate the problems and provide alternate avenues for graduating students.

State governments should consider setting up of project experience centres in cutting edge technology areas such as cloud, big data and mobility. These incubation centres should tap companies which are interested to pose challenges to students to find innovative solutions and also volunteer supervisory talent to these centres for a limited duration. Students should be provided with an opportunity to work for a maximum of 3-6 months in these centres and this experience would equip them with skills that would make them attractive to the employers. Further, the states which are trying to woo companies to set up software development centres in their states would find this mechanism to be very beneficial to encourage companies to test waters using the project experience centres and eventually with the experience of working with the resource pool, some of them may decide to set up their own centres in the state paving the way for employment generation.

The academic system has to recognise that the winds of change sweeping the boardrooms of companies are making them focus on innovation, driven by the technology advancements through mobile, social media and the likes. In this context it is important for the academia to come up with new modus operandi to make the students think of what they could do with the knowledge or information which is easily accessed by all of them. According to Tony Wagner, the author of the book ?Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World?, it is no longer the access to knowledge or information which would distinguish one student from the other but it is the ability to showcase what can be done differently with this knowledge which will make the candidate distinctive.

In other words, instead of seeking jobs, as Tom Friedman says, it is time we equip the younger generation that is getting ready for their careers to find their own jobs either by becoming entrepreneurs or groom them to create their own jobs with specialist skills by marketing themselves to the organisations of their choice. For this to happen, the winds of change are required in the classrooms as well?to make the demographic dividend work for India and the IT industry.

The writer is CEO, Global Talent Track, a corporate training solutions company