Arindam Lahiri, CEO, Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) believes focus, discipline and punctuality are amongst the most important criterion when one is interviewing potential candidates.
What are the key general skills that you look to hire freshers?
Some of the generic skills that are very important to hire freshers in the industry include employability skills – people who can work in an organised manner, people who know how to communicate with the team members, both superiors and juniors, as well as external customers and finally consciousness around safety, because in the automotive industry safety is a very critical element, both at the manufacturing environment, as well as in service dealership environment, including, while using the vehicle.
What skills and qualities do you look for in employees on the shop floor?
On the shop floor, recruiters typically look at people who have a certain sense of working in a scheduled environment, with adequate focus on discipline and punctuality. Secondly, the ability to work in a team is important because a lot of coordination is required when you are working on a shop floor. And third is, safety consciousness, because anybody working in the auto industry needs to be completely aware of safety issues, including the use of personal protection equipment, also known as PPEs.
When hiring new talent, which are the various streams of education/qualification that can apply to your company?
The larger volume of hiring happens for ITI pass outs and diploma holders from polytechnics. This category also includes the National Skill Qualifications Framework (NSQF) certification which is given by various awarding bodies under National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) – Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) is an affiliated awarding body of NCVET.
What are the challenges you face when hiring new talent?
There is a lot of skill mismatch which are generally faced while doing recruitments for various organisations. There could be a mismatch in terms of geography. The student might be at one location and the job is in another location. Second mismatch is in terms of expectation regarding the job roles; that is what the job offers, both in responsibilities and compensation. The people who are wanting to apply for that job may have different expectations regarding the roles and responsibilities, and compensation. These are the biggest hurdles to recruitments in the industry.
Do you think there is a gap between academia and industry? How can this be bridged?
It definitely exists. A lot of times, industry supports academia typically, through CSR funding. However, the bigger engagement that is important is that the faculty do not have a current exposure to what is happening in the industry. This is where industry and academia need to work together. This is where industry needs to play a bigger role, in terms of inviting faculty members to experience what is happening currently in the industry. At the same time, industry members must go to the campuses regularly, talk to the students .
This gap must be bridged by the industry to ensure these faculty members in turn can give the right inputs to the students and build the right expectations among the students. It is better to equip the trainers in the academic institutions with the reality of what is happening in the industry.
What are you doing to attract, train and retain young professionals?
In a bid to attract young professionals, it is very important the industry needs to have an outreach programme to various academic institution campuses and engage with them to give them an exposure about why this industry is exciting.
In terms of retaining talent, it is most important the organisation needs to show a career growth path for the students, as well as enhance the quality of engagement with the people that they are hiring. If you hire a person with a higher skill level in a job that doesn’t require that level of qualification, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to retain that person. Ensuring that you hire the appropriate skill level of person, duly assessed and certified by an independent body, is very important.
What is your hiring target for FY2023?
The industry has a lot of requirements. As a council, we anticipate hiring more than one lakh candidates for the industry this financial year. This is not the complete requirement of the industry. But as a council we look forward to being able to handle this kind of volume.
Are there any additional programs that you have incorporated to upskill your workforce?
Yes, we do that very regularly – both at dealership and multi-brand service workshop level, as well as at the shop floor level for component manufacturers. As a council we engage with people being upskilled for electric vehicle technologies, servicing of BS6 engines, etc. We are also looking at certain elements of industry 4.0 applications – around robotics, automation areas for upskilling people. We are also looking at areas like upskilling of people in areas like software applications in the automobile industry.
How do you ensure to retain your hardworking employees? Is fiscal incentives the only way to motivate employees?
Different companies in the industry will have different approaches and many of them will have multi pronged approaches. While financial incentives are definitely one part of the component, it is also about the work environment, opportunity to learn and grow within the organisation, retraining opportunities, people getting higher exposure and responsibilities – all of these are important considerations for people to consider to stick around with the same company.
What are the policies laid down to ensure work-life balance for your employees?
Different companies in the industry will have different policies. Overall as an industry, if you are looking at job roles in the manufacturing or production environments, there are times when it is quite difficult to manage the work life balance, because there are pressing requirements like a machine being broken down and you have to ensure that the production gets completed within a stipulated time for a critical shipment.
It is a question of matching the expectation of somebody. What he or she expects as a work-life balance is a responsibility that the organisation needs to fulfil, in terms of maintaining that expectation or setting the right expectation.
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