There is a worldwide search for ‘good talent’ to occupy key positions in organisations across most sectors resulting in the use of the phrase: ‘war for talent’. At a time when the Indian economy has registered significant growth, it is imperative to convert the much touted demographic advantage in to competitive strengths and fuel a sustainable growth.

This can be realised only if good talent is recognised, acquired, nurtured, developed, and is given opportunities.

Even though the IT & ITeS has done India proud, this sector too, paradoxically, is continuously in search of good talent at various levels.

The search can be considered paradoxical and a reality shock if we view the existing canvas of  ‘ready availability’ of a large number of scientific and technical manpower churned out from numerous institutions every year, yet experiencing inadequate availability of good talent.

The root cause of the above is perhaps buried deep under the fact that, in India, the Academia-Institutions-Industry interactions, or collaborations to achieve some degree of synergy are traditionally few and far between some existing pockets to make an impact nationally, let alone globally.

The mismatch between the offer of talent from qualified students and the need for requisite competence and talent for employability by the corporate sector is starkly clear. Statistically speaking about 2-3 per cent get hired from a group of 100 -150 students scanned for a possible fit in the IT sector. The percentage improves to 15-20 per cent if we consider all the other sectors.

Tap opportunities

The natural approach for the industries in a rapidly growing economy is to tap the opportunities and meet the market pulled demand by offering competitive products and services.

When we add the driving force of globalisation, the business opportunities for products and services in huge markets with sensitivities to varying cultures open up even more. All this naturally brings about a change in the quality of the workforce needed to service these requirements.

What they lack?

While our bright engineering graduates and undergraduates acquire analytical and problem solving skills, a majority of them fall short in many of the skill sets required to service the needs of the Industry. This is also true in the booming retail sector where less qualified workforce with adequate talent would do at the first few levels.

To begin with, for a majority of freshers, there is a need to strengthen their English vocabulary and improve the art of communication in solving problems effectively through team work.A larger component of business development is centred on understanding and working with the ‘human dimensions’ in problem solving—the so called soft skills in management parlance.

This aspect, to a certain extent understandably, does not get due attention in the academic pursuits. With this reality, the industry is left with no choice but to include a programme of soft skills training at the beginning, even though this is not the main endeavour of the business enterprise. While some effort has begun in some engineering and undergraduate schools to give some ‘management’ inputs as “part” of the curriculum, it needs to be streamlined with inputs from the industry to increase the relevance to the corporate business world.

Long term review

A mere addition of more text book knowledge will no doubt have some impact, albeit a marginal one.

From a strategic viewpoint of increasing our nation’s competitiveness to exploit the demographic advantage, a composite long term review of the system of education itself is overdue, but rather quickly. One possible solution to meet the need of the hour is to offer a rigorous programme of soft skills training to bright engineering and other graduates over a period of six to eight weeks by ‘re-orientating’, moulding, mentoring and mobilising existing talent in inter-dependent ‘talent enhancement schools’.

Soft skills

This would primarily involve embedding the soft skills to enhance their strong analytical and problem solving skills.
Topics such as attitude management, goal setting, performance management, communication skills, inter-personal relationship, emotional intelligence, business etiquette, team work, customer relationship, leadership skills among others could form the ‘core’ inputs.

This approach would result in gain all around in many dimensions:

*The young graduates does not get the reality shock in the same measure as he/she is getting now of not being selected in spite of a good qualification.

*The young graduate gets an opportunity to kindle his/her competitive spirit to perform in alien discipline, good for developing talent.

*The corporate benefits by reducing the overall cost and time of recruitment by selecting from these inter-dependent ‘talent enhancement schools’.

*Corporate also benefits by reducing their first tier in-house training costs and the effort.

*The engineering and the undergraduate schools get time to make the necessary adjustments.

This certainly would not be the end for talent search but only the beginning, since good talent needs to be recognised, acquired, nurtured, cultivated, developed and offered opportunities in the corporate world through a system of challenging tasks, impressive career prospect, good mentor in addition to adequate compensation.

The writer is Knowledge Head, Metis ERC India, a group company of R&M Asssociates, which provides Human Resources Development solutions to organisations.