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In the IT business, HR is an asset. Over the last decade, the industry has grown double-digit mainly due to the skills the industry was able to attract. HR specialists say that two major industry trends have emerged: there is paucity of good talent at the middle management levels, which is a very critical factor in the growth of an IT organization. Secondly, almost everyone has understood the importance of two qualities in software professionals-the ability to upgrade and sharpen technical skills and a solid foundation of soft skills, including client-facing skills.

Recently, in an HR summit, some of the placement officers of academic institutions voiced a key issue: do IT companies display a sense of haste when it comes to recruiting freshers. Is it a real issue? Shrikanth G of Dataquest checked it out with Bhaskar Das, VP-HR, Cognizant. Excerpts:

Bhaskar Das, VP-HR, Cognizant

Some say the campus recruitment process begins well before the final semester, and already having an offer letter from a leading IT company in the pocket, brings down a candidate's final academic score. As an HR head, any comments?
No organization can take part in a campus recruitment process without the explicit approval of the campus itself. To merely see organizations coming ahead of time is to absolve the campuses of their duty to not open the placement season much ahead of their time. A good example of this is what happened at the premier B-Schools a decade ago. As a norm, the placement season then used to open around January/February. With competition coming from new B-schools, the immediate reaction was to move the dates earlier. This trend ensured that in a couple of years, the placement was happening not at the beginning of the New Year, but by the end of the previous year-that is November/December.

This left the industry alarmed as students appearing for their job interviews had yet to finish significant portions of their curriculum, more so the specialization elective that is normally taught in the last two semesters. The premier B-schools realized that instead of giving in to this kind of pressure, it would be much better to take a stand and open the campus season almost at the end of the last semester. While this took a bit of courage from all the players, the results were very satisfying. Premier B-schools did not lose jobs to the other B-schools and the industry did not feel cheated that some organizations had a better reach to the pool of fresh talent. The point to be noted here is that academic institutions, especially those who are sure of their quality, can demand that their campus season open only in the final semester.

What about engineering colleges?
In engineering colleges, there are some streams like computer science and a few of the other circuit branches, where proficiency in the subject directly factors into the select-reject decision. However, for a large number of companies, including us, the pool of potential employees is not only students majoring in these areas, but also in other areas like electrical, electronics, mechanical or production engineering. Often, the number of fresh graduates taken from these and similar disciplines is quite significant. Moreover, after around 7-10 years, there is very little correlation between success in the industry and the area of specialization. The select-reject criteria for this group of students are, hence, not based on their knowledge of "software" skills. Factors like data rationality, systems thinking, and, most importantly, the deployment of knowledge to solve problems become key indicators of success or failure in the selection process.

But what about the ramifications on the institutions...
One of the unfortunate consequences of an early offer is that some students do not concentrate on their studies thereafter. This roughly translates into wasting almost a year's good time. This phenomenon can be stopped only if offers are made at the end of the academic session. While this addresses a part of the problem, there is some pressure to come up to the minimum standards. For instance, Cognizant mandates that a minimum of first class is maintained in the final semester for the employment offer to be valid. However, where the system fails is that it does not inspire the students to go beyond this minimum level. One of Cognizant's specific efforts to mitigate this problem is to introduce a part of our organizational training during the last year of their course.

What are the major challenges you've faced in the campus recruitment process?
We have to recognize that for a large population of students in engineering campuses, the end objective is to get a good job. For academic institutions, their success is dependent on the caliber of students they are able to attract at the entry level. One of the major ways in which prospective students evaluate engineering colleges is by the track record of their placements. The IT industry's growth is directly related to the number of good software professionals entering the industry from these institutions. Wherever this relationship is clearly understood and valued, there is a win-win situation. Over the last decade, most institutions have come to understand this and, hence, the amount of co-operation from the institutes has also significantly increased.

From an industry standpoint, can you put forward some ideas that will improve the campus recruitment process?
IT organizations depend upon the business of its clients. While there may be some periodicity in the clients' business, but at an aggregate level, the growth would be distributed throughout the year. Hence, everyone would like to grow at an equivalent rate in all four quarters. We can say that on the demand side, the equation is flat throughout the year. However, on the supply side, the situation is very different. Most of our colleges finish the academic season almost at the same time. Therefore, in the months of May-June-July, there is a huge supply of fresh students and, thereafter, it declines sharply.

The concept of a fall and spring cycle is already prevalent in many parts of the world. India must seriously look at this area if it were to address the issue of software person-power in any significant way.

Can you cite some of the current pain areas?
Organizations partially manage this difference in demand and supply by artificially, and unilaterally, having different joining dates, spread across the year. This system not only complicates the logistics of induction and assimilation, but, more importantly, the arbitrariness of the different joining dates also irks the would-be employees. After their academic life, when students finally get an offer from their dream company, they are all charged up to prove themselves in the world of work. It is de-motivating to ask them to wait for another six months before they have even walked into an organization. We believe that an ideal solution for this problem is to have at least two batches pass out every year at a gap of six months. For the academic institutions, this may entail some additional set-up efforts as well as costs. However, in our view, this effort will pay for itself within the first five to six years.

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