Given the vast business spread at HP, the skills required for various entry level roles vary from R&D, to manufacturing, to sales, and even BPO. Pertaining to the varied business spectrum we cater to, the critical skills that we look for include technology, business process and communication skills.

As an organization, most of our candidate sourcing at the entry level happens from campuses and a certain percentage is through referrals, and we also hire from vocational schools for some specific roles. While the number of people required for the business is not a problem, the readiness of these candidates to be deployed on-the-job immediately on joining is questionable. Though they have the required subject knowledge, given their exposure to the academic programs, most entry level people are not well equipped in the latest applied technology or softer skills, since they are not trained to handle these in the finishing schools.

The absence of readiness in candidates to be productive on the job, leads us to invest on training them on areas ranging from product knowledge to domain training, which is for a span of anywhere between 3 months to 1 year depending on the type of skill development demanded from the job role. The cost associated with such training interventions required at the entry level is between 5000 USD to 25000 USD per person per year, which caters to the training needs of entry level people falling in the salary brackets of 2.5 lakh per annum for a simple graduate to 8 lakh for high-end technology skill roles. Given the scale and frequency of such training, most of the training is conducted internally and mostly relate to proprietary technologies or processes that are critical for HP.