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Past Issue: JUNE 2012
From the Editor's Desk
The 500 Million Challenge
By Ester Martinez
Jun 4th 2012
The skilling quest for India is not a simple one. There are challenges ranging from - getting students to join vocational courses, convincing employers to invest in training the talent pool and to pay higher for skilled talent. What is clear is that if India is to achieve its skilling targets, it requires the synchrony of the various stakeholders to create a perfect ecosystem.India’s educational system further adds to the challenge: while the system is able to produce “higher end&r... Read more »
Cover Story
Architecting the ecosystem for skilling
By Prince Augustine, Executive Vice President - Human Capital, Mahindra & Mahindra
Jun 8th 2012
There are three profiles that we hire at M&M – one is workmen who work at the shop floor, second is engineers who would be involved in design and manufacturing work and third are those who work with suppliers and the sales team. To hire OEMs is not a big problem, but we are concerned with the quality of people coming out, because our hit ratio is very high and if I interview 20 people, I end up hiring one or two. Therefore, the quality of people passing out is a matter of concern. So... Read more »
Absence of customer connect
By Dr. Anita Bandyopadhyay, Director, Center for Excellence - Corporate HR, Raymond
Jun 4th 2012
At Raymond, we seek entry level talent for our retail formats - The Raymond ahop network, exclusive brand outlets of Park Avenue, Parx, Colorplus and Neck Ties and more, and for the manufacturing business. While Raymond as a brand personifies class and premium, the entry level talent that we find from various graduate courses, do not have the required polish. They lack English speaking skills, basic operating skills, persuading skills and most importantly the ability to connect with customers.... Read more »
Skilling Special: Is India on Track?
By Gyanendra Kumar Kashyap & Rajlakshmi Saikia
Jun 4th 2012
While on the one hand, India Inc. is struggling to maintain a healthy growth rate & profitability, on the other hand, the Sector Skills Councils - charged with workforce development of particular industry sectors - are struggling to fulfill their core functions. Will the doubling of the allocation for National Skill Development Fund help put the skilling agenda back on track?People Matters delves deeper into the various initiatives and developments in skilling to assess whether the efforts... Read more »
Candidates lack basic skills
By A. Sudhakar, Senior Executive Director - HR, Dabur India
Jun 4th 2012
Given the nature of our business, we hire in large numbers for sales and distribution where we hire close to 400 employees every year. The fundamental problem is that the numbers are far too many as compared to the availability of such people in the marketplace. And once you start meeting the people, the ratio of those who qualify is one to ten. While the number of applications is large, the screening and short-listing process often lands us with probably three candidates and then only one mig... Read more »
It takes 6 months to train a fresher
By Abhijit Bhaduri, Chief Learning Officer, Wipro
Jun 4th 2012
As an IT company, the key skills set that we look forward to would be analytical/problem solving and communication skills, along with an ability to learn. Subject matter expertise and technical depth in the area of study are critical. Programming skills for the vast majority of software roles or other functional and professional skills that are needed for other roles are necessary, but not sufficient.We hire for inherent talent and train for domain, technology and functional skills. As the stu... Read more »
New hires lack generic skills
By Alok Narain, Senior Vice President - HR, Quatrro Global Services
Jun 4th 2012
The key skills for entry level are the functions of specific requirements within each of the business lines that we operate in. Quatrro currently operates in very diverse business lines including mortgage solutions, risk management solutions, finance and accounting outsourcing and technical solutions. In addition we are also in the knowledge services space where we do content enhancement work, data services and ITR work. And lastly, the other business line is in the area of games, where ... Read more »
Don’t regulate capacity building
By Amit Bhatia, Founder & CEO, Aspire India
Jun 4th 2012
The success with skills development in India over the past 2-3 years has been mixed. The lukewarm results are largely due to four reasons: Absence of necessary pre-requisites, soft demand side, early-stage supply side business models and academic and vocational skills development should become Siamese twins. I expect skills development to gather steam by 2014-15 and reach a tipping point as we successfully address the following bottlenecks:• Absence of necessary pre-requisites: Two pre-re... Read more »
Look for cultural fit
By Arun Sehgal, Executive Vice President - HR, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare
Jun 4th 2012
At the entry level, we hire business school graduates. The attempt is to attract good talent and therefore, we have a rigorous process to assess and select. We assess the candidates against criteria, which amongst other things, consists of high performance leadership behaviors such as ‘building confidence’, ‘communication’, ‘enable and drive change’, etc. We also look at the intellectual bandwidth and cultural fit.At GSK, business school graduates undergo tr... Read more »
Talent availability is a problem
By Ashish Srivastava, Director - HR, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance Company
Jun 4th 2012
Insurance being a push product, calls for additional time and effort and this distinguishes it from any other normal product. It was anyways never easy to find people for the entry level jobs in this industry. A number of insurance companies work with institutes to provide them industry ready employees by guaranteeing 100 percent jobs for the courses; yet they are not in a position to get the required talent base. So, it is obvious that talent availability is a problem.We have a unique model c... Read more »
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