The Hiring Mantra

Attrition and shortage of quality manpower resources are
probably the most crucial challenges staring the Indian IT industry in the face
today. The government, Nasscom and the industry players themselves admit the
criticality of the situation and acknowledge the need for immediate adoption of
remedial measures. Considering the dismal picture in the IT industry itself, it
is not difficult to guess the plight of enterprises who are maintaining a
sizable IT team. The better quality resources, no doubt, get initially absorbed
in the IT sector itself, leaving enterprises to scrounge through the base of the
pie for selecting their IT manpower.

In light of this unenviable scenario, there is little doubt
that CIOs are faced with tremendous odds in formulating decent recruitment
strategies for their teams. Perhaps, this explains the increasing propensity
among Indian enterprises to outsource their IT infrastructure and requirements
to third parties, leaving themselves to maintain lean IT teams of their own.
These would, in most cases, involve the CIO and a handful of senior IT
managers-lateral hiring primarily suffices for these organizations. However,
there are some enterprises who do not rely tremendously on outsourcing and,
therefore, still need to recruit freshers or relative rookies for their IT
teams. It is interesting to examine how CIOs of these organizations have devised
their recruitment policies, and what sort of attributes and qualities are given
priority while selecting the IT team of choice.

Dataquest spoke to Ashish Chauhan, CIO, Reliance
Industries, Sanjeev Kumar, country head-IT, Philips Electronics India and V
Subramaniam, CIO, Otis Elevator Company India, three of this brethren who have
devised their own recruitment policies. All three concur on certain
issues-just having strong technical acumen might not be enough for the newly
recruited, but they need to possess a strong external focus in terms of business
and customer requirements; a premium is being paid to be a 100% team player as
there is no place for self-centric techies who look superciliously towards
others; and it is not only problem solving skills that are sought after but also
sound legal knowledge about contracts, SLAs and the likes.

Team DQ

mail@dqindia.com

	Ashish Chauhan CIO, Reliance Industries
	Recruitment Criteria Capability to align with the business goals and functions of the organization Team leadership skills; ability to provide support in different areas of sourcing, contracting, legal, especially for relatively senior people Resilience quotient of candidates particularly with regards to disaster recovery, data management, quality of data, security and confidentiality Sound technical know-how on various modes of service delivery and different enterprise applications Ability to leverage technology to build competency and skills within the organization
	Sanjeev Kumar country head, IT, Philips Electronics India
	Recruitment Criteria Experience and education remain the most sought after competencies Determination to achieve excellent results Need to possess a sound external focus/market focus Ability to find better ways to solve a problem Ability to quickly adjust to an interpersonal, technical and organizational culture match Ability to develop self and others, at the same time inspiring commitment to demand top performance
	V Subramaniam CIO, Otis Elevator Company India
	Recruitment Criteria Possessing strong business acumen and passion for work, interacting with different intra organizational departments Ability to nurture leadership skills from the very beginning to become leaders, not just managers Be a team maker knowing how to develop the team and its talent Develop a strong customer focus knowing how to convert business needs to reality Be adaptable to changing business and technical conditions with strong execution orientation