Recruitment is an expensive affair for most companies. A company like Tata Tech, with a 6000 strong workforce, has an annual budget of Rs. 80 lakh just for travel related to recruitment. And what worries them more is the fact that the number of people who accept is reducing. There was a 90% acceptance rate 3 years ago. Now it is down to 82% (acceptance rate is percentage of people who join after offers are made to them). To make things worse, the July to Sep season is also migratory season for the US higher education birds. Some of the companies, TCS being one, are even ready to share with the T & P Officers – the 100 standard questions that will be asked to candidates in interviews. (And nothing else, please note!) Conclusion: companies are not very happy with their current recruitment strategy.

Companies are worried because they are not getting good people – and students are worried because there is so much unemployment. So we are looking at a skill mis-match. A group of 18 people, from different walks of life, met recently to discuss how we could contribute to reducing this skill mis-match – in a meaningful and profitable way. A plan was presented, which entailed content being delivered to students through Skill Development Centers(SDC). Each SDC would be a 500 sq ft office with a big TV, cameras and a computer lab. The assessment and training sessions would be online and administered through the lab. There would be local faculty. Students would be charged between 10 K and 20 k for a 2 to 3 month course. The team sat down to critique the plan, and suggest what changes would work best.

The aim of the group was to help students from Tier 3 towns. There are advantages of recruiting from small towns. Tata Technologies selects more students from Govt College Amravati than it does from VIT, Pune! Companies have over the years created thumb rules of what percentage of applicants to select from which college. The main problem with Tier 3 towns is communication. This lack of language knowledge also has an impact on interviews. Even after students are recruited, IT companies for example, would hesitate in putting these students in client facing roles. One of the meeting participants had tried organizing a communication training for an engineering college in Gondia – but lamented that how can we create an ‘environment’ at Gondia which could foster an ‘English’ culture.

Another concern area was Aptitude tests – as 80% of students get dropped out at the Apti stage itself. She lamented further that even students who are good on communication don’t seem to show a high interest in getting trained on Apti skills. Maybe we should just do away with Apti training. This year for example Sinhgad group decided that students can train whatever way they want – but they would be allowed to sit for placements only if they clear the Apti tests (designed by AmCat). Whatever the idea for filtration be, the challenge remains on how to motivate students!

The first feedback was on scaling up. One of the participants had had an experience of starting something similar to an SDC in Chhatisgarh. They had started in Bhilai – and scaled up to 27 centers in and around Bhilai. The challenge was maintaining faculty quality as you went further away from Bhilai. Maybe we will first need to develop a faculty training engine!

SEED Infotech, whose customers are primarily tier 3 town students, has a good model to offer to recruiters. They only supply students who are pass-outs. The attrition rates are low, since the SEED students have very realistic aspirations – and getting into a typical mass-recruiter company is a wild dream come true for most of them. For the SME segment SEED offers a no-questions asked 2 month free trial for recruiters. You can check ‘em out – and keep ‘em if you like ‘em.

There was another alternative model which was also discussed. There is a company which has a tie-up with Cognizant. They approach colleges which Cognizant has visited – and make an offer to them. They will take students from there who have just missed the cut at Cogni – and with inputs from Cogni – and design training for such students. Once they are satisfied, they will send select students back to Cognizant for a fresh round of interviews.

But what is pertinent to note is that the current lot of skill development programs are designed by people who are totally disconnected with industries. So how do we get the industry connect people? Are the SAP, Oracle and Microsoft run certification programs good enough? The intention of these IT giants is more revenue generation than recruitment. When companies design modules to train their own recruits, they get it right more often than not. So the moot question then was who should be the designers of these modules inside of the companies?

Could it be the underemployed staff on bench?

Could it be academicians (for example professors of an engineering college)?

Could they be retired personnel from the industry?

Could it be stars in the industry?

There was a suggestion that we could request IT companies, for example, to look at their to create content. One critique for this suggestion was that the bench usually consists of the relatively incompetent people – and nowadays companies look at retrenching anyone who stays on the bench for more than 2 months. (A general observation is also that IT companies hardly have any benches nowadays)

Academicians were generally ruled out. With the exception of a select few colleges like PSG Coimbatore (which does a lot of technical work for Ashok Leyland) most colleges have professors who have almost no industry experience.

Retired employees may be a choice – but in some fields the information / practices that they have may be a bit dated.

The stars are probably the best bet! But would they have the time? How can we incentivize them for this effort? We looked at a revenue share model where developers would get paid every time their content gets monetized. Which means like youtube, beyond a certain threshold, the more the views, the more the pays. This is also how companies like Coursera work. They have modules which are developed by companies like Google and Facebook. The carrot for participants is that – finish these courses – and you could end up getting employed by these companies!

There are some progressive companies which have decided to follow this track. Tata Technologies has been training students in select engineering colleges on automobile related software. Zensar used to run a program at Symbiosis. The intent was to be able to identify good students at college level – the indirect effect was also enhancing employability. An average Tata Tech module student ends up receiving more than 2 offers. They received a backhanded compliment from the Forbes Marshall team who were very happy as the trainees were productive almost from their first day on the job. Most of the Zensar batch was placed with IT companies like TCS and Infy!

Campus placements is a very challenging space. One, colleges are keen only to place students – their concern for training is zilch. Two, students who have mediocre academics are concerned more about passing the subjects than getting a job. Three, it is a chicken and egg situation with respect to students. They are not motivated because companies usually do not visit their campuses, and companies don’t visit campuses because students are not motivated!

Campus placements nowadays also involve a myriad of ‘ethical’ issues. Colleges are ready to pay air-fare and stay to recruiters. There are some agents who can ‘fix’ HR managers to visit campuses to just conduct interviews. The college of course pays for the ‘fixes’ to the HR guys – through the agent. And finally, there are shady colleges which will have tie-ups with companies for conducting ‘interviews’. Some of the enterprising colleges even have arrangements to pay for salaries of students (from student fee) for the first few months.

It was considered wise to stay away from this muck. Instead the decision was made to concentrate on passed-out students. And to start with a counselling session. Most students don’t get jobs because their decisions are made by everyone except their own selves. We need to find out what a student actually wants out of life. Or what is an activity that gives the least level of discomfort to a student. We need to work closely with a few industries – and find out what is the requirement that they have from a fresher. Our job would be to play match-makers. In order to differentiate from competition – we need to offer a student a healthy chance of placements. Anything more than 50% would be welcome. So our intake should be decided by the commitment that we receive from our sponsoring industries about the numbers that they want. We need to be selective in sending candidates. The industry should get the feeling – that even if we are sending only 3-4 people, but they are the ones who have been filtered – and would have the skills required – and would last for a couple of years at least. This would be a win-win-win situation for the student – the industry – and the SDC!