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Acknowledgement
At the outset we would like to thank all the senior industry leaders, mostly from the HR function of various companies, who took out time from their schedule and participated in the Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations. The insights and details shared during these sessions form the basis of this white paper. We once again thank you for your efforts and look forward to an ongoing engagement with you. Industry Participation and Opinion : Amit Mathur, Head HR, Vmware Murthy RK, Head Talent Acquisition, MindTree Sailesh Menezes, Country Manager-HR, HP India Rohit Agrawal, Head - Talent Acquisition, Informatica Padmini Giri, Vice President - Talent Acquisition, ITC Infotech Gerald A Menezes, Director Human Resources, R&D, Alcatel-Lucent India Limited Prashant Deshpande, Senior VP-India Software Labs, IBM Mahesh Jain, Senior VP Talent Acquisition, HCL Technologies Rajeev Bhadauria, Director HR, Jindal Steel and Power Limited Sushil Baveja, Head-HR, DCM Shriram Ltd Blesson George, Head-HR, Jubilant Life Sciences Arti Sharma, VP-HR & Admin, Schneider Luminous Sanjeev Kumar, VP-HR, Moser Baer Power & Infrastructures Ltd Amaresh Singh, Country HR Director, Alstom Manish Chum, Head-Talent Management & Performance Management, Whirlpool Sunil Bakshi, Head-Data Analytics, IMRB Rahul Varma, Executive Director, IPSOS Prashant Bhatnagar, Director-HR, Sapient Sundar Ram Gopalakrishnan, VP-Technology Sales Consulting for APAC, Oracle Sudeshna Datta, EVP & Co-Founder, AbsolutData Monika Diwan, Head-HR, GFK Sameer Walia, Managing Director, The Smart Cube Neelam Gill Malhotra, Vice President-HR, CSC Anadi Sinha, President Group HR, Minda Group Vittal S, General Manager HR, Sonalika Group
Sunil Ranjhan, Vice President GA [HR, IR & Admin.], Honda Cars India Ltd. Kiran Deshmukh, Deputy Managing Director, Sona Koyo Steering Systems Ltd Vijay Deshpande, Vice President -HR, JK Tyres Vaishali Ahuja, General Manager-Human Resources and Administration, BMW Chetna Malviya, VP-HR, Edelweiss Financial Services Pallab Mukherji, VP-HR, India Infoline Saurov Ghosh, Executive VP & Head - HR & Training Birla Sun Life Insurance. Vibhash Naik, VP-HR, HDFC Life Priya Khare, Director-HR, Fullerton India Vinay Deshpande, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Financial Services Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG Ruchita Sharma, Head-HR, WSP Group Sunil Goel, MD, Global Hunt Geetanjali Shivdasani, Director HR, Mercer Vikas Verma, Director, Aon Hewitt Parijat Thakur, Head-HR, JLL Satya Sinha, CEO, Mancer Consulting Deepak Bharara, Director - Corporate HR, Lanco Infratech Limited Manoj Shrivastava, COO, Homestead General HS Bagga, ATS Greens Brigadier Rajesh Malhotra, Amrapali Group Aviraj Nandan, The 3C Company Raj Sharma, Era Infrastructure Luxmy Rajput, Premia Projects
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.0 Overview: The Skills Conundrum .................................................................................................. 6 2.0 Perspectives: Industry Academia Interactions ........................................................................... 8 3.0 Industry Academia Interaction: Ideal State Model ................................................................... 14 4.0 Industry Academia Divide: Measures to Bridge the Gap .......................................................... 15 5.0 Notes ......................................................................................................................................... 19 6.0 Sources of Information .............................................................................................................. 19
Executive Summary
Lack of availability of right talent is a burning issue that runs across all the industry sectors in India. Even as millions of people join the workforce each year, the gaps in skills requirements and skills availability continue to rise. As part of Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations, senior HR leaders from a wide spectrum of sectors such as IT, manufacturing, automobile, BFSI, real estate, infrastructure, and consultancy, voiced the same concern unequivocally. According to these experts, these gaps are much more pronounced at the entry level where they find that most of the fresh graduates are not job-ready, cannot be deployed directly onto projects, and require significant investments at their end for training and up-skilling. One of the key reasons for these issues is an almost complete lack of a structured and sustained interaction between industry and academia. This disconnect between industry and academia is not limited only to a few sectors or to a few institutions, but cuts across all sectors and exists even at very fundamental level where in many cases industry and academia are not even aware of each others basic requirements. The industry is of the opinion that the students mostly have theoretical understanding of subjects, the curriculum being taught is outdated, the students are not aware of technologies, software, and hardware that are used in industry, they have no or limited exposure to corporate world, and are also found wanting in terms of aptitude and attitude. The academia agrees that while bulk of these observations are relevant, the real problem lies elsewhere. The academic institutions are struggling with a serious dearth of quality faculty members who are well exposed to the corporate world. Due to limited resources, these institutions are not able to invest in creating the type of infrastructure that a company can provide. Also, even if the curriculum is updated and is made in sync with latest industry trends, the faculty members are not adequately equipped to teach it as these can only be taught by practitioners. It was also observed during the Sharda University Industry Boardroom Conversations that many of these issues, through well known, have not been addressed in a systematic manner that could lead to a long term solution. The ownership of bridging this gap lies with both industry and academia and they need to meet at a middle ground. A structured methodology has to be followed where each company ties-up with 5 to 10 institutions and each institution ties-up with 5 to 10 companies to carry out joint initiatives. These initiatives should cover student training, faculty up-skilling, longer internships, live industry projects, joint research and consultancy work, new co-owned programs catering to requirements of specific industries, and revamp of course curriculum. This will not only help institutions in providing a significant value add to their students, but will also be a tremendous boost for the industry as it will get job-ready and readily deployable fresh hires with the right skill sets. This will go a long way in solving the imminent skills requirement vs. skills availability challenges across industry sectors.
Information Technology
Manufacturing
Automobile
Indias automobile industry is one of the key drivers of the countrys economy. The manpower availability in this industry is surely large in numbers, but not in skills. HR managers are having a tough time in finding the right talent not only in specialised function such as research & development, technical jobs, and auto design but across the spectrum. Other issues which are looming large over this industry are demandsupply fluctuations and employers are finding it hard to manage rapid skill upgrades at technological front for their employees. As per Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC), there are 32 Million blue-collared workers in the infrastructure sector, with majority being unskilled and the shortage of skilled manpower, acute. The situation is no different for white-collared workers in this sector. The sector strongly requires candidates with experience in land acquisition (which is mostly localized), construction management, project management etc. Based on the growth expected in the infrastructure and real estate sectors, it is expected that about 83 million persons would be employed in the construction sector by 2022. While the demand for professionals is witnessing a hike, the growth of the sector is getting severely impacted by the lack of corresponding growth in number of skilled manpower. According to a survey released by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF), 79.2% students would like to take up consulting as a career. Though many join the industry due to the glamour quotient attached with the profile and companies, recruiters find it difficult to retain the talent for longer period as many employees leave due to a spectrum of issues ranging from worklife balance to better remuneration in non-consulting organizations. Thus, the sector witnesses a constant churn, which makes it difficult for partners and CEOs to create and sustain a strong pipeline of readily available talent.
Consulting
Manufacturing Industry
Industry perspective: The biggest challenge faced by the HR fraternity in manufacturing companies is finding the candidates with hands-on experience or technical skills. There are almost no institutions, which impart specific profile-based skill trainings, fine-tuned as per the requirements of the organizations. Most institutions provide generic understanding of concepts during engineering, which are not useful at workplace. Students are not aware about the latest machinery and software, which are being used in companies, leading to deployment time of over 6 months in many cases. There is a struggle in getting people with relevant attitude, value set and the industry mindset. This has been an ongoing struggle and companies have tried to collaborate with various institutes, Bschools as well as engineering colleges, to find the key as to how best one can contribute to the design of curriculum that is relevant to industry expectations. The manufacturing sector also has not invested much in positioning and branding themselves and their jobs vis--vis IT and IT enabled services. The feedback of the students is that they dont seem to know what kind of life companies are offering. This results in lukewarm response of students during campus recruitments for many companies in this sector. Academia Perspective: What companies define as talent is a person who is absolutely skilled, available off the shelf to get started on day 1 of the job. This is not going to be possible unless some steps are taken. Job specific competencies and analytical & reasoning skills are being developed by the academia but the diversity in manufacturing sector is very huge and the technology involved is very diverse. Educational institutes cannot install all kinds of training units for their students and industry should be ready to act as the force multiplier and provide the required resources to groom students on real-life machines, processes, and software.
Automobile Industry
Industry Perspective: Being one of the key drivers of the countrys economy and keeping in mind the manpower intensive nature of the Indian Automotive industry, the challenges associated with the industry are huge too. Industry experts have voiced that companies is looking for more profitability and more productive workforce, especially during the current scenario of slowdown. This means companies will not add to the workforce and will try to get the maximum possible productivity from their existing employees. Therefore the current focus is on capability building of existing employees. The long term view is also that the academia should generate industry-ready candidates for specialised function such as research & development, technical jobs, and auto design, which are going to gain much more prominence in India in the next few years. Experts from the industry have voiced that out of all engineers coming out today, only 20-25% are employable. There are so many engineering colleges churning out so many young engineers but their quality is of questionable standards. Availability of talent, attracting the talent and retention of talent are the three fundamental challenges faced by the industry. Academia Perspective: The reasons for this lack of employability is that colleges are short on faculty members and students are not getting the kind of mentoring and training that they need to get. There is a huge gap between what the industry requires and the skills of the students. Also, the faculty, which is the only link between the two is not technically equipped enough. There is no interface between the industry and the institutes, especially when it comes to automobile sector. Academicians are also of the opinion that bulk of the students will become employer-ready if their exposure to the ways in which industry works starts at a much early stage than it happens right now. This is possible through projects, internships, industry visits, mentorships by industry experts, etc. Only such deep-rooted and collaborative partnerships have the potential to exponentially increase the percentage of employer-ready students.
Consulting Industry
Industry experts believe that there is a big misconception about consulting, which is impacting talent acquisition and retention. When candidates join, they are attracted by the glamour of the industry. But, after working in the industry for some time, the charm fades due to travel, deadline related pressure, and competition and they start missing the work-life balance. Students come with fixed theoretical concepts that they have learned in schools. They are not exposed to research methodologies and when a client needs one to bring something new to n the table, one essentially needs to do research. . This research perspective is absolutely missing in students. Experts have noted that the top three skills any successful consultant should have are: 1. Client relationship management 2. Project management 3. Sales and business development From the skills perspective, companies are looking for people with business development skills, analytical skills, out-of-the-box thinking, knowledge of technology, and research skills. The business is waking up to the fact that possibly they need to align themselves with an institution, train people, hire about 100 of them every year and put them across to various clients. Or, align with a nodal agency such as National Skill Development Corporation, hire young candidates from Tier-II and Tier-III cities, put them through training modules and send them across to various clients. These are ideas that are now being mooted by the industry. Academia Perspective: Since the industry is very hard-pressed for time, the approach they follow is getting talent off-the-shelf. This kind of short-term approach would not be possible in education because the skill requirements for different types of consulting assignments are so diverse that all kinds of skills cannot be imparted during a course. Some basic and generic skills can be imparted, and the leaders in consulting industry need to take the onus to facilitate the development of more specific skills suited for a particular segment. If leading companies come forward to nurture talent like this, they can then have the first choice to select the best from this talent pool and the ones left behind can be absorbed by other organisations, especially niche consulting companies, which need the talent but are not able to afford the training costs involved.
The onus of addressing these gaps lies with both industry and academia. Both need to adopt a structured mechanism under which each company ties up with 5 to 10 institutions (depending on its capacity and requirements) and each institution ties up with 5 to 10 companies (depending on the streams offered) to carry out join initiatives. It is of paramount importance that these initiatives have complete buy-in from both academia and industry with equal contribution so that these can be taken to a successful conclusion. Measures to be Taken New programs as per industrys requirements Industry should play an active role in curriculum design of existing programs Resource sharing between industry and academia Focus on longer summer training/internship period and projects Involving students and faculty in research/consulting Projects Training of faculty and students on technical and soft skills Primary Responsibility Academia Secondary Responsibility Industry
Industry
Academia
Industry
Academia
Academia
Industry
Industry
Academia
Industry
Academia
5.0 Notes
1. Sharda University has created academic tie-ups with leading corporate for sharing of technology, tools, software and faculty. For instance, Sharda University has launched MBA in analytics in collaboration with IBM where experts from IBM will be teaching the cutting edge analytics technologies to students. Similarly, Sharda University has launched training program with Oracle University to train its students on latest applications
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