Igniting Talent

Amidst the growing fear of shortage of skilled manpower to keep
up with growing demands of the IT industry, TCS, one of the leading players in
the business, has kick-started a program called Ignite, aimed at tapping science
graduates and grooming them to become software professionals. According to an
estimate, if offshore outsourcing work grows as predicted, in the next five
years, India stands the chance of falling short by 150,000 software engineers.
While companies like Infosys and Wipro have been hiring graduates on and off,
TCS has formalized the process.

Ignition On

Ignites pilot lasted seven months, and 500 trainees inducted into TCS. The
process of identifying these new graduates started in March 2006, and was
completed by December 2007. The company aims to scale up to hire 2,000 science
graduates in the current financial year.

The training program before induction was based on intensive
training on live projects. These graduates were selected from over 200 colleges
spread across nine states. Of these, more than 60% are women, some of them from
the northeastern states, which have not been on most companies radar for
sourcing talent. Another interesting aspect is that more than 65% are first
generation graduates in their families and most belong to tier-3 cities, class-C
towns, and villages.

The training begins with logic and problem-solving methods,
moves to their applications in the real world, and covers fundamental concepts
of various programming paradigms. Apart from pure IT, the curriculum also
focuses on soft skills, customer-orientation, and project management.

Talking about the idea behind the program, Raman Srinivas,
project head says, "We wanted to diversify the talent pool available to the
company by trying new methodologies to facilitate learning and create a new
architecture of socially inclusive growth."

Not Totally New

Though this is probably the first formal initiative by an IT company in
India, some have been hiring mathematics or science graduates for the last few
years. Bikramjit Maitra, senior vice president and head, HR, Infosys
Technologies says, "We have been hiring BSc students specializing in
mathematics and also physics, statistics, computer science, electronics, and IT
over the last few years. These numbers have been relatively less compared to
engineering graduates, but steadily growing."

Wipro Technologies has also been involved in innovative
initiatives through WASE (Wipro Academy of Software Excellence). The program,
set up in the year 1995, was aimed to prepare select BSc, BCA, and BCM students
to graduate them into software professionals. So, while the TCS program is of
seven months, Wipro initiates these graduates to pursue a four-year (eight
semesters) course in association with BITS, Pilani. But, obviously, the type of
skill-sets acquired through the longer program is different from what TCS will
be able to achieve.

Selvan D, senior vice president, Talent Transformation, Wipro
Technologies says, "Apart from the WASE program, we also have been hiring
science and mathematics graduates and training them to become software
professionals. But, these professionals have been mostly trained to work for
application, development, and maintenance kind of projects. Last year, we had
taken around 100 science graduates for this purpose."

Infosys, however, puts these hires into areas such as testing,
infrastructure management, and product engineering, etc and also software
engineering. Even Wipros plans are along these lines, reserving the high
technology areas for BEs. TCS, on the other hand, plans to use its newly trained
graduates for the entire range of practices that the company has.

Maitra of Infosys says, "While we have a robust training
mechanism in place to groom such hires, the expectation is that they will
demonstrate proficiency in competencies like analytical thinking, process, and
quality orientation, team work, business communication, testing, design,
etc."

BEs Vs BScs?

Does this mean that these graduate turned software engineers would be at par
with their BE peers in the company? No. The compensation offered will be less
than what BEs get. Companies are not shying away from this fact. Srinivas of TCS
says, "BEs will always have an edge over their new peers as the number of
years they have put in are not the same."

Talking about the challenges TCS faced in identifying the 500
trainees, Srinivas says, "Talent is not the exclusive preserve of any group
and the challenge for us was spotting the right talent. Also, it was a challenge
in terms of getting the right talent from the diversified group across the
country, over a period of seven months and transforming them into world-class
software professionals."

Expanding the Talent Pool

Realizing the need for availability of quality talent, prime minister
Manmohan Singh, during his 60th Independence Day address promised to set up five
Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight IITs, seven IIMs, and
20 IIITs (Indian Institute of Information Technology). He also declared
secondary and higher education as a priority and vowed to support 6,000 new high
quality schools besides 370 colleges in districts with low enrollment rates.

The Potential

Considering that India churns out 3.1 mn graduates annually, the TCS program
is an appreciable effort. Everybody has been talking about expanding the talent
pool by moving into tier-2 and tier-3 locations, but this is probably the first
time that such an initiative has been undertaken in a dedicated manner. If
successful, this will change the rules of the game and all the discussion around
talent shortage will subside. Will this stop the flight of a potential software
workforce who are gravitating toward BPO for want of a BE qualification.
Becoming a software professional will become more attractive. Will it impacts
the BPO hiring. Another issue that needs to be tackled is the degree of
employability, which is pretty low. Finishing school initiatives that have been
undertaken by some of the state governments need to be accelerated to improve
the situation on this front. It is hoped that other companies will also follow
suit, once the TCS pilot succeeds.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in