Dataquest : 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.

HR Status

The number of IT-BPO professionals employed in India grew from less than 200,000 people in 1998 to over 1.6 mn in 2007, largely because of the countrys demographic profile and network of high-quality academic institutions.
India currently has around 347 institutes of higher education and 16,885 colleges with a total enrollment of over 9.9 mn. These produce around 495,000 technical graduates, nearly 2.3 mn other graduates and over 300,000 post-graduates every year.
Even at the current levels of employability, India has the largest pool of suitable offshore talent, accounting for 28% of the total suitable talent pool available across all offshore destinations.
Indias emergence as a preferred outsourcing destination has created the need for about 2.3 mn professionals by 2010. Based on current estimates, a shortage of 0.5 mn skilled knowledge workers may arise if remedial action is not taken.

Source: Nasscom

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."


We have been hiring science and mathematics graduates and training them to become software professionals. Last year, we had taken around 100 science graduates for this purpose	The number of BSc students specialized in mathematics and science has been relatively less compared to engineering graduates, but steadily growing	We wanted to diversify the talent pool available to the company by trying new method to facilitate learning, and create a new architecture of socially inclusive growth
Selvan D is senior vice president, Talent Transformation, Wipro Technologies.	Bikramjit Maitra senior vice president and head, HR, Infosys Technologies	Raman Srinivas, project head, Ignite Program, TCS

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