Recruiting Trends, Problems and Opportunities for 2014

The say preparation is the best defense against competition - and the year 2014 is gearing up to become a watershed year in recruitments. It's admittedly getting harder to find candidates with relevant job skills and poaching attempts are going to be more ruthless. With a dearth of top talent and scarcity of skills currently plaguing the Indian employment sector - Corporate HR Departments are focused on the acquisition and retention of high performers - by any means necessary. As Employers plan their strategies, TimesJobs.com spoke to Though Leaders on the ensuing War for Talent, and here are the recruitment trends to watch out for - Social/Professional Networking Sites According to a TimesJobs.com survey, 49 per cent of the surveyed employers believe that the key benefit of social recruiting is its potential to reach the inaccessible, passive candidates. Nearly 18 per cent employers opined that employing social networking tools would help them source and hire potential tech-savvy candidates. Faster filling up of key positions, thereby reducing the recruitment time is also considered an important benefit of social recruiting, as agreed by 16 per cent of the surveyed employers. Experts agreed that technology, social tools and referrals play a very crucial role while adopting this approach. According to Sunil Goel, MD, GlobalHunt, "Social and professional networking sites have been able to attract people, irrespective of their domain knowledge, functional expertise and geographical location. Social and professional networking sites also keep individuals regularly engaged to their community." Employer Branding Employer branding is one of the most powerful recruitment tools available in today's competitive environment. Essentially employer branding communicates and shapes an organisation's reputation as an employer. Incorporating branding efforts into recruitment activities strongly reinforces the image and the message that the employer wants to portray to the potential candidate. The objective of employer branding is quite simple. Internal Hiring /Succession Planning Internal hiring as well as internal job rotations are becoming key tools for employee motivation as it helps a lot in succession planning wherein everybody sees growth for themselves. To improve the possibility of its employees to become leaders in the future, an organisation should focus on building skills, provide a strong mentor, and show a career path. Given today's criticality of talent acquisition and retention, it is in fact critical to create a leadership pipeline. According to Asim Handa, CEO, GI Group India, "It's important that employees have a feeling of security and can see career growth with their employer. Employee referral programs can work wonders for companies as it gives incentives to employees as well as ensures quality candidates with minimum drop out ratio." –

Mobile Recruitment Mobile devices have become more powerful than computers. New age technology allows mobile users to respond in real time either in attracting talent, or while responding to jobs or video interviews. According to Srikanth Rengarajan, executive director & president, ManpowerGroup India, "Mobile recruiting is a dynamic and growing industry with over 19% of job seekers using mobile devices to search for jobs. The sudden increase of smart-phones has created a massive audience of potential job-seekers to address. Increased engagement of both; the employer and the potential candidate has eased the recruitment process. To use the efforts of the mobile and expanding the database of job seekers; to push out the relevant info to the seekers and attract the potential candidates reflects the significance of this source of recruitment." -

Gamification Employers today are ready to experiment with their hiring strategies and gamification seems to be another innovation approach in this direction. According to the TimesJobs.com survey results, nearly 25 per cent employers use gamification for the purpose of recruitment. The techniques of gamification, use of puzzles and challenges for locating niche skills, can be used to judge problem solving, quick thinking, time management and many other leadership-essential qualities that just can't be measured with multiple-choice tests. For the hiring of the forthcoming tech savvy Gen Z people, this technique is a real success. Prashant Bhatnagar, director- Hiring & Staffing, SapientNitro India, "Many organisations have inculcated Gamification into their hiring strategy lately, to ensure that new hires come up to speed faster than before; thereby helping them contribute to the firm's productivity and creativity from the very beginning. Gamification has risen as an effective tool in sifting through talent. It helps one understand a lot about a candidate's characteristics, their behavior, approach, potential to apply knowledge and problem solving capability." -

Gamification in the workplace is not just about using badges, mission and leaderboards. Instead, the strategy is about truly understanding who you are trying to engage, what motivates them, and how gamification can change the way they work, communicate and innovate with peers and customers.

Campus Hiring Indian organisations are investing time, energy and money to tailor make campus recruitment strategies that feed their talent pipeline. In a survey conducted by TimesJobs.com, nearly 70 per cent of the organisations claim to have a comprehensive and ingenious campus recruitment program. There are huge number of companies in each of the markets and a limited number of professionals available to cater to the need of the markets. Campus hiring has been able to fulfill a major skill gap, where companies hire from the campus and train them as per their need, process, function and technologies. According to Srikanth Rengarajan, executive director & president, ManpowerGroup India, "Campus hiring has been kicking off lately as employers are placing a lot more importance on people who have a passion for winning, are extremely accountable, can take quick decisions and plunge into execution, are consumer-centric and have the basic qualities required to build leaders and teams. Campus hires can prove to be the best fit to the framework of the company, such that they can be successful long-term contributors to the business and organisation." Employee Engagement -

Employees are an asset and the key contributors in business output and growth. Older the employee, better the value proposition for both, the company as well as individual, as they understand each other better. Employee engagement, therefore, has become a long term business proposition for both employee and employers. According to Ashootosh Chand, director-Business Development, RIPL (Ricoh Innovations Pvt Ltd), "As a move towards improving employee retention, companies are finding newer and innovative ways of engaging their employees - one leading example is engaging employees with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Technology is also used for engagement, these days. Employees, who are technologically engaged with an organisation, tend to better believe in the vision and strategic alignment of the organisation. A more motivated workforce means lesser employee turnover as employees are willing to stay with the firm longer." Employee Referrals Employee referral is one of the most trusted talent sourcing methods, as through referrals one can gauge the individual beyond the resume and assess the working style of the person. Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire, conversion rate. The referral hires tend to understand their role better and start performing sooner; due to prior understanding of the background of the company and its culture According to Sunil Goel, MD, GlobalHunt, "Employee referral is one of the trusted sources as through referral you know beyond the resume about the individual & all round working style of the person. This is also one of the minimum time consuming & cost-effective process." Crowdsourcing A TimesJobs.com survey revealed that nearly 57 per cent of surveyed employers use crowdsourcing for recruitment purpose. Much has been said about many being smarter than a few. The wisdom of the crowd or crowdsourcing, gives precedence to the collective wisdom of a group of people over a single expert. Though not a new concept, it has recently gained momentum as a very efficient recruitment tool in the new age recruitment model Recruitment 4.0, which emphasises on technology and networking advancements. -

According to Sameer Bendre, chief people officer, Persistent Systems, "Collective wisdom and collaboration is the crux of crowdsourcing. By effectively using crowdsourcing, companies are sure to reap enormous benefits. The ability to tap into the experience and talent of people in a collaborative manner is probably the biggest advantage of crowdsourcing; it can be used as an effective and hassle free marketing tool." -

Application Tracking System An ATS comes with features to import, store, organise and manage candidates' information in a centralised database. This helps in building a robust candidate pipeline to meet your current and future hiring needs. Looking for the right candidates from a sea of applicants is not an easy task. Modern ATSs have been able to address this problem to a great extent through name, skill or candidate data search. According to Avi Gopinath, vice president-Operations, 99ATS, "Recent enhancement in 99ATS allows users to search with any name or words mentioned anywhere on candidates' resume. Easy tracking also allows one the freedom to plan the work ahead depending on the real-time or future availability of prospective employees or contract workers. Perhaps, one of the biggest advantages of ATS is that one can have 24x7 access to a centralised database of candidates which can be shared with the key management personnel. This not only enhances the quality of hire, but gives it speed as well." Big Data With Big data, companies can cultivate information from various sources and compile this as a data bank. Based on the assessment of this data and recommendations, organisations are able to get the best of available talent from the market. According to Srikanth Rengarajan, executive director & president, ManpowerGroup India, "The predictive power of big data, when applied to human behavior is set to revolutionize how business operates. Big data analytics can be one of the major differentiators' of progressive HR organisations from the ones that are not. Big data can predict the behavior of talent with the level of accuracy to allow an organisation identify a typical profile of people that it should invest in. This method plays a central role in helping the organisation identify the talent which is not likely to succeed in a future leadership position." –

The Top 25 Recruiting Trends, Problems and Opportunities for 2014, Part 2 of 2

Dr. John Sullivan

Dec 16, 2013, 1:39 am ET

If you are looking for a comprehensive list of the corporate recruiting trends and predictions for 2014, this two-part article covers the top 25 most likely trends. Part 1 included the first 14 trends that covered new recruiting opportunities and continuing recruiting trends. In this Part 2 of the series, I cover the 11 remaining trends, including recruiting challenges/problems that corporate recruiting will likely encounter during 2014 and some recruiting areas that will likely continue to diminish in importance. I have also included a separate section covering eight developing areas that have yet to peak.

Section 3: The Biggest Strategic Recruiting Challenges

The eight most significant corporate recruiting challenges or problems that will be prominent during 2014 include:

1. Retention problems will increasingly impact recruiting – as more employees become comfortable shifting away from security needs and toward more exciting job opportunities, turnover rates will increase by over 25 percent. This dramatic increase in turnover will create many new “sudden openings” which will put an added strain on already stressed recruiting systems. In order to help reduce future turnover, the “potential for early turnover” will have to be included in the assessment criteria for all finalists.

2. Speed once again becomes essential to remain competitive – over the last few years — with high unemployment and little competition for talent — in many cases recruiters could take their time and still land top candidates. As the pace of change in business and the competition for talent increases, firms will have no choice but to revisit “speed of hire” approaches and tools in order to land candidates that are in high demand.

3. Limited resources will require position prioritization – the increased hiring volume coupled with the inevitable lag in being provided with additional budget resources will require most firms to prioritize their jobs. Recruiting will then allocate their resources toward filling revenue generating and other high-business-impact positions.

4. Business volatility makes workforce planning more necessary but more difficult – as continuous business volatility in a VUCA world becomes the “new normal,” executives will increase their demand for data-driven workforce planning. Unfortunately, most talent functions simply do not currently have staff with the capability to conduct sophisticated workforce forecasting and planning.

5. College recruiting must be reengineered if it is to succeed – the demand for college talent in key majors will continue to increase dramatically. Unfortunately, corporate college recruiting budgets and processes have been mostly stagnant over the last few years, even though colleges themselves and the expectations of their students have changed dramatically. A reengineered college recruiting model must move beyond a focus on career centers and increase its capabilities in the areas of global college recruiting, remote college recruiting, recruiting students from online universities, recruiting “passive” students, and the use of market research to completely understand the job search process and the expectations of this new generation of grads.

6. The shortage of top recruiters will become evident – as recruiting ramps up, firms will begin to realize that there is a significant shortage of talented and currently up-to-date recruiters. After poaching from the rapidly shrinking executive search world, leaders will begin bidding over top corporate recruiters. A lack of quality internal and external recruiter training capability will make the recruiter shortage even worse.

7. Large firms must learn to compete with startups for talent – the recent lavish funding and the economic success of numerous startups will continue to make them attractive to innovators and top talent. Unfortunately, few major corporations have a market-research-driven strategy or a set of tools that allows them to successfully recruit against startups for these valuable prospects with a “startup mindset.”

8. Finding high-impact technology will still be problematic – although there is a wealth of new technology in recruiting, almost all of it is designed to reduce costs and administrative burdens. After 20 years of waiting, I have yet to encounter the breakthrough recruiting technology that produces a competitive advantage by demonstrating in a split sample that its usage directly improves the on-the-job performance of all new hires by at least 20 percent over existing processes.

Section 4: Areas That Will Continue to Diminish in Importance

The downward trend in these three final corporate recruiting areas will continue through 2014.

1. Recruitment advertising and the corporate website – as more applicants demand authenticity and crowd sourced “real” information, both the corporate career site and all forms of traditional recruitment advertising will continue to produce a lower ROI.

2. Sourcing becomes easier – as almost everyone becomes “findable” on the Internet and social media, the formally critical role of sourcing will be reduced. The new focus will shift toward improving the various “selling components” of recruiting.

3. Underperforming sources need to be deemphasized – the growing emphasis on using metrics to determine the quality of hire from each source will continue. And as a result, all heavily used channels like large job boards, Facebook, and job fairs that can produce low-quality hires will have to be deemphasized.

—————————————————–

Trends That Won’t Peak Until 2015 and Beyond

This last section covers seven developing corporate recruiting practices that can’t accurately be classified as trends for at least another 18 months.

· Competitive analysis is not yet a standard practice – although recruiting is clearly a competition and a “zero sum game,” most recruiting functions are almost 100 percent internally focused. Unfortunately, you can’t prove to executives that you provide a competitive advantage unless you do a side-by-side comparison of your recruiting approaches and results with your talent competitors. The recruiting function will also eventually have to develop plans to track and then counter each your competitor’s major recruiting and employer branding moves.

· Market research practices will eventually allow you to fully “know” your prospects and candidates – eventually recruiting leaders will learn that you can’t effectively find or sell top prospects until you fully understand how they search for a job, where they would see recruiting information, and what factors excite them about a company or a job. The sales and customer service functions have successfully used market research for years, and eventually these practices will be adopted within the recruiting function at all top firms for both experienced and college hires.

· Firms must eventually begin to “map” their future talent pipeline – great recruiting functions are forward looking, so they attempt to identify and assess future talent targets long before they are needed. These approaches require that you identify your future talent pipeline. Leading firms will eventually learn to supplement their standard filling-vacant-job approach with a more proactive talent pool for talent pipeline approach. This practice involves identifying and then “mapping” the top talent throughout your industry with the goal of eventually bringing the best onboard when they are ready to move on. More firms will also eventually learn to use professional learning communities as talent pools, while others will use pre-need employee referrals to develop this talent pipeline based on employee recommendations.

· Finding “their work” online will eventually become a key sourcing tool – as more and more individuals post examples, pictures, videos, or portfolios of their work on the Internet, finding talented individuals who might not be looking for a job will move into the mainstream. In addition, evaluating their actual work will prove to be an accurate assessment approach.

· Virtual reality simulations for assessment will gradually be introduced – although airlines and the military have successfully used them for years, the costs have slowed simulation usage for assessing candidates. As costs decrease, virtual reality simulations will eventually become a standard assessment practice.

· Hiring those without degrees or standard credentials will soon become more common – firms like Google, Facebook, and most startups have had notable success with hiring individuals regardless of their degree status. As a result, “credentialess” approach will eventually become a more common corporate practice as metrics demonstrate a similar high success rate in business that has been found in hiring non-college grads in the sports and entertainment fields.

· Personalized recruiting is on the horizon – although it is still currently rare, more organizations will attempt to personalize their recruiting and to target their recruiting pitch specifically to individual high value prospects.

Final Thoughts

There will be a marked increase in recruiting competition in high-growth industries like technology, the mobile platform, social media, construction, and healthcare. In addition, the next year will see an increased demand for high performers, technologists, and innovators in key jobs in every industry. In fact, a recent survey of CEOs revealed that 77 percent of firms are currently changing their talent strategy, which means that most CEOs agree with me that the need for change in the talent area is already present.

As a recruiting leader, realize that, just like in the product area, if you want to dominate your recruiting marketplace, you will have to move fast in order to stay ahead of the trends and the adopted practices of your competitors. If you delay taking action, it is almost impossible to “catch up” if you fall too far behind, because your talent competitors will be continually moving ahead of where they were when you originally benchmarked against them. In order to stay ahead and also to build a competitive talent advantage, don’t wait for your new year’s budget to kick in before you start developing your plan for addressing the upcoming problems and for taking advantage of imminent talent opportunities.

Professionals can honestly disagree about which trends will be the most prominent over the next year, but there can be little disagreement over the fact that dramatic changes are unavoidably right on the horizon.

The U.S. economy experienced its share of ups and downs in 2013. Yet as the year comes to a close, the economy is showing signs of improvement that should continue into 2014. The housing sector is rebounding, the stock market has hit new highs, consumer spending is up and unemployment is at its lowest in five years. Even with these positive indicators, the debt issues in Washington will continue to play a role in impeding a more accelerated jobs recovery.

Employers are cautiously optimistic that 2014 will bring a stronger job market, but they aren’t ready to commit to upping their staff until the outcomes of debt negotiations and other issues affecting economic expansion are clearer. While we’ll need to wait until these issues are resolved to know the full impact they’ll have on employers’ hiring plans in the New Year, job seekers should pay attention to the following seven trends shaping the 2014 job market, identified in CareerBuilder’s annual job forecast:

1. Full-time, permanent hiring stalled
The uncertainties surrounding the debt ceiling will cause employers to be more guarded in their plans to hire permanent staff in 2014. Twenty-four percent of employers expect to hire full-time, permanent workers – down from 26 percent last year – yet one in ten is still undecided about recruitment plans. Nearly one in four employers will hire at a slower rate or will hold off on headcount expansion until the debt ceiling is resolved in the first quarter.

Sales will lead the way in positions employers will most need to fill in the New Year, with 30 percent of hiring managers planning to recruit full-time, permanent employees for sales-related roles. Information technology is close behind, at 29 percent, followed by customer service (25 percent), production (24 percent),administrative (22 percent), engineering (17 percent), marketing (17 percent),business development (17 percent), accounting/finance (15 percent),research/development (13 percent) and human resources (10 percent).

2. Companies relying on temporary and contract hiring
A trend that has been growing post-recession is for companies to turn to contract and temporary help to meet their hiring needs. This allows them to have flexibility in their workforce, so that as market demands change, they can dial up or dial down staffing as needed. Forty-two percent of employers plan to hire temporary or contract workers in 2014, up from 40 percent last year. Of these employers, 43 percent plan to transition some temporary employees into full-time, permanent members of their staff.

3. Part-time hiring on the rise
Companies will also rely more on part-time employees in the New Year. Seventeen percent of employers expect to recruit part-time workers over the next 12 months, up three percentage points over last year. While various factors will influence this trend, 12 percent of all employers stated that they will likely hire more part-time workers in 2014 due to the Affordable Care Act.

4. STEM occupations continue to grow
As the U.S. continues on its path of economic recovery, there are certain occupations that will be a driving force behind the rebuilding and strengthening of our economy. The technological innovations, new products and discoveries that come from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) occupations help fuel economic growth and keep the U.S. competitive in a global marketplace. These occupations, which have been a major focus in the past several years, will continue to remain center stage, with more than one in four employers (26 percent) planning to create jobs in these areas over the next 12 months.

5. Skills gap widening
While the growth of high-skill, specialized occupations is a positive sign for the economy, human resources managers are struggling to keep up with the demand to fill these jobs. Looking at a subset of HR managers, 51 percent said they currently have positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates. Forty-six percent said these positions go unfilled for three months or longer.

Companies have come to realize that if they wait for the perfect candidate, he or she may never come, so they’re putting more emphasis on training and development to help shrink the widening skills gap. Nearly half (49 percent) of employers plan to train people who don’t have experience in their industry or field and hire them in 2014, up 10 percentage points over last year. Twenty-six percent of employers are sending current employees back to school to get an advanced degree – and covering all or some of the expense.

6. More companies “onshoring” jobs
The U.S. government has strongly supported initiatives to bring jobs back to America as a way to spur U.S. growth. It looks as though the push for more “onshoring” is proving fruitful: 23 percent of companies who offshore jobs said they brought some of those jobs back to the U.S. in 2013. What’s more, 26 percent plan to do so in the next 12 months, indicating that this is not just a passing trend.

7. Compensation more competitive for specialized and in-demand positions
In order for companies to find and retain the best talent, they’ll need to offer competitive compensation, especially for in-demand or hard-to-fill positions. Sales and IT – the top two positions companies plan to hire for in the New Year – are also where employers expect to provide the biggest salary increases. When it comes to high-skill roles, 26 percent of employers plan to raise starting salaries for these specialized positions in 2014.

Looking across positions within an organization, 73 percent of employers expect to increase compensation for existing employees – on par with last year – while 49 percent will offer higher starting salaries for new employees – up from 47 percent last year.

Employers are continuing to proceed with caution with their hiring plans as they head into 2014. Yet, as the economic issues plaguing Washington play out over the next few months and employers find their footing, there is greater potential for the average monthly job creation in 2014 to exceed that of 2013.

Matt Ferguson is the CEO of CareerBuilder and author of “The Talent Equation: Big Data Lessons for Navigating the Skills Gap and Building a Competitive Workforce.” http://www.talentequationbook.com

The new trends in interviewing

Just like fashion, new trends are always emerging for interviewing platforms. Yet, making a career transition is tough enough without focusing valuable energy on pursuing the latest bells and whistles. Though some may not be your preferred style, there will always be a “new black” that recruiters are ready to try on during an interview. The idea is not to chase the trends but be cognizant, and capable, of successfully navigating the ones that come your way.

Group Interviews
Somewhere along your career journey you may participate in a group interview. This may include multiple hiring managers, team members or even a panel. You might even find yourself being interviewed alongside other applicants. This “firing squad” approach isn’t necessarily easy (or fun) unless you’re one of the hiring professionals who prefer to save time by rapidly narrowing the talent pool. Odds are, any time the number of people in the interview increase, so will your stress. The success strategy includes not being caught off guard when you walk in the room and discover multiple interviewers or applicants. Being aware of this trend and even practicing your approach will help you stay calm and focused. Be sure, however, to address each person equally with your responses and eye contact.

Video interviewing
The fact that they don’t even make laptops without cameras anymore should clue you in that the video interviewing trend is here to stay. When it comes to video interviewing the challenge lies in overcoming self-distraction, or in other words, getting out of your own way. If your Internet connection is sketchy, you might find yourself focusing more on technical issues than concentrating on impressing an employer. Check your connections beforehand or book a conference room where technology interface is part of the package. Another hurdle includes “personal” distraction. Some candidates lose focus and eye contact and tend to fidget more as they get distracted by phones, family or even seeing their image reflected back during an interview. If you’re one of them, set up a time and place to conduct a few video interview dress rehearsals before the big day.

Quirky questions
“If it were possible, what theme song would play each time you entered a room?” “What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career?” “If you were a Disney character, which character would you be and why?” Welcome to the trend of quirky questions. Hiring managers ask questions like these, and other seemingly not so relevant queries, for number of reasons, including having a creative way to assess an applicant’s personality. Quirky questions can also be used to determine how well you can handle being thrown a curve ball, if you’re flexible and innovative and if you have the ability to learn from past mistakes.

These interpersonal skills-driving questions may also ease the tension in an interview. The challenge is not to overthink them but rather go with the flow and offer honest, and in some cases light-hearted, responses. Remember, this is still and interview, so your answers should shed a positive light on your ability to contribute positively to an organization. Perhaps you’ve chosen Alice in Wonderland as your Disney character; be sure to give a host of reasons why “Alice” would make a good employee. She’s inquisitive, thoughtful, creative and willing to take risks. One note of caution, even if the interviewing mood becomes more playful with these questions, it’s not the time to be self-indulgent or too forthcoming; especially if your theme song is “Highway to Hell.”

India faces a curious dilemma. In the next two decades, it will add over 200 million people to its working age - between 18 to 60 years - population. Much more than any other country in the world. Even China, seen as the mother lode of the global economy this century, will see its workforce shrink by about 100 million by 2030.

For India, more working people means more income. More income means a more prosperous nation. For a country that will become a middle income nation - per capita annual wages of $1,200, translating into Rs 4,500 a month - by the end of 2010/11 after more than a century of penury, its young population presents a never-before opportunity for transition.

That is, if it can get its people readied for work. If it can train its young to man global standard factories. If it can get its young to be smart accountants. If it can turn its young into efficient yet friendly front office staff at super markets. If it can have its young tell the difference between a dovetail joint and a lap joint in a well-crafted wooden table. If it can produce enough nurses and doctors to charm and heal the world's increasing old. If it can...

If you are among those sceptical of India's capacity to do so, Business Today has news for you. There are the beginnings of a trend of India starting to train its people on a scale large enough to alter the nation's future. Dozens of training companies with ambitions of training millions in engineering, construction, manufacturing, retailing, insurance, banking services including microfinance, accountancy, hospitality, health care and other vocations are sprouting up around India.

Nitesh Kumar Chaurasia, an arts graduate from Gorakhpur, a town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, is one among the thousands of young Indians flocking to these institutes. Enrolled at a four-month module on business accounting at IIJT, a skill training provider and part of India's biggest staffing company TeamLease Services, the 21-year-old's logic for paying Rs 28,000 for the programme is simple: "I would rather work in a comfortable office environment." Among the several jobs Chaurasia has pursued in the past is a position in the Uttar Pradesh police force.

The draw of a higher probability of landing a job is strong and many pay the Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 course fees even if it is more than half a year's income in a lower middle class family. IIJT, across its 123 centres in India, has 12,000 trainees on its rolls. In an economy where even multi-billion dollar companies are growing revenues at 15 to 30 per cent annually, demand for talent is such that many among the neo-trained are getting jobs.

The story resonates across India, as BT writers and photographers who travelled to Bulandshahr, Chandigarh, Pune, Mysore, and Manesar, besides big cities such as New Delhi and Hyderabad, found. In the capital's Shastri Park, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is training its managers and line workers. It has roped in multiple private players to train its workforce.

Among various modules, IndiaSkills, a venture between Manipal Education and the UK's City & Guilds, trains the technical staff (mostly diploma holders from Industrial Training Institutes, or ITIs) in safety and maintenance. The target is to train 2,000 in batches of 70 a week; already 800 have completed their training. This is just the beginning, says Hari Menon, CEO, IndiaSkills. "Over the next five years, we plan to skill and facilitate employment of one million learners through 500 skill centres covering 50 per cent of districts of India," he says.

Aiding that effort is the National Skill Development Corporation, or NSDC, a partnership between the Union government and industry associations. The National Skill Development Policy puts the need for skilled hands in India at 530 million. NSDC has been entrusted the task of producing a 150-million-strong skilled workforce by 2022, or some 13 million a year. (The remaining 350 million, it is expected, will be covered by the current crop of colleges, ITIs and other institutions.) That's a big jump from the three million skilled workers India produces annually today. NSDC has committed Rs 667 crore to support private and government-aided skill initiatives and has given its nod to 26 projects to date (See NSDC's Project Partners). Several more are in the pipeline.

With a huge addressable market for skill development and active government support, many are joining the bandwagon, including corporates such as Centum Workskills and IL&FS, first time entrepreneurs such as Edubridge and iStar, NGOs like Pratham, and private players NIIT, Global Talent Track, or GTT, and Basix's BABLE. India is also poised to get its first vocational education training university in Gujarat to be set up by the state government and TeamLease.

The range of training runs from shopfloor to software. At an office on Pune's Dholey Patil Road, around 40 students are learning dotNET, a Microsoft Windows technology, at a lab set up by GTT. This is the latest centre of GTT, set up in 2008, adding to a chain with a presence in 15 states, including far-flung Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

But international experts point to the danger of a government-led nationwide training programme. Karan Khemka, partner at Parthenon Group, a London advisory firm specialising in education, believes hiring companies are running their own training. Pointing to Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the United States, or Infosys Technologies closer home - both have made training a fine art - he asks: "If vocational training had such tremendous potential, why is it that there are no large vocational training companies operating successful businesses?"

Yet, there is no denying India's crying need for skills, the genesis of which lies in its faulty education system. Government programmes such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the growing prosperity of citizens means higher enrolment - near 100 per cent in many parts of the country today - in primary schools, but competency tests of students show how poor the quality of education is. A survey of rural schools in 2010 by Pratham, a non-governmental organisation engaged in education, showed that more than half the students in Class V could not read beyond Class II textbooks. In urban India, some eight million drop off from the education system between Class X and graduation, according to one estimate. (About two million graduate in India every year.) Such dropouts make for customers of what is being touted as the next big business opportunity: NSDC estimates India's training market at $22 billion.

t was a 2005 study by software lobby Nasscom and consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. that jolted India out of its reverie on employability. The study focused the spotlight on what employers knew - just one in four engineers was employable, or could be trained for a job. Profiles in other industries were no better. The employability situation has worsened since then.

Nasscom says employability in technology in 2011 is still 26 per cent, while in business process outsourcing services, it is between 10 and 15 per cent. "It's not that needs have changed or the industry requirement has gone up; it's just that the input quality has dropped," says Sandhya Chintala, Senior Director for education initiatives at Nasscom, referring to the abysmal levels of competence among students coming out of colleges.

That is bad news for the software and BPO sectors, which already spend Rs 5,400 crore on training every year and are projecting a need for 10 million workers by 2020, nearly four times the current 2.54 million. "About 95 per cent of Indians coming out of the education system are not employable," says GTT's Ganesh. But "a majority of them can be made job-ready".

One way to get there is to copy what India's biggest carmaker Maruti Udyog has been doing: "adopting" ITIs for talent. It has employed over 500 ITI graduates with the Maruti Service Network so far, says S.Y. Siddiqui, Managing Executive Officer, adding his company will take the number of partnerships to 35 by the end of March. Other automakers, too, follow similar programmes (See Employability, Delivered).

Still, training half a billion people in 11 years can be a very tall order. Dilip Chenoy, NSDC's CEO and Managing Director, says the biggest challenge before the training industry is scale. So while NSDC does promote entrepreneurs who know their local regions well and NGOs such as Pratham, it is aware of the need for roping in the big hitters. "This is imperative as players such as Centum, IIJT and Everonn, among others, have the ability to deliver scale,'' says Chenoy. Centum Learning, part of the Bharti Group, has formed a joint venture with NSDC called Centum WorkSkills India, to train 12 million people across 11 states in 383 districts by 2022. A venture with a unit of tech-enabled trainer Everonn will be even bigger, says the NSDC head.

Seasoned players like Centum bring to the table both backward and forward linkages. "We work with companies to understand their skill set requirements over a period of time. We then work backwards and decide what courses we would like to launch and where we should be opening our training centres,'' says Sanjeev Duggal, CEO and Executive Director.

There are start-ups in the wings, too. Intex Technologies, an IT hardware, mobile phone and electronics company, based in Delhi, is working on a solution based on third generation mobile phone technology where a phone handset can be used by instructors and students. Bangalore's iStar Skill Development, an NSDC partner, was founded by two batchmates from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to focus on training for the financial services industry.

The quality and the availability of trainers is a challenge too. "Creation of trainers is one of the major issues before the country," says Labour Secretary Prabhat Chaturvedi. To address the problem, the Labour Ministry is assessing trainer requirements. The ministry has given a mandate to the Noida-based VV Giri National Labour Institute to conduct a study on trainer requirements. "We will work on the future course of action once the report is submitted to us March-end," says Chaturvedi. The news is not likely to be good, given how underpaid teachers and trainers are in India.

The next challenge is the lack of standardisation and certification in an industry that is more motley than organised today. Even as the likes of IndiaCan, a partnership between Educomp and Pearson, or IndiaSkills have been quick to embrace international certifications, NSDC's Chenoy says he prefers sector-specific skill councils that will "set up a competence matrix". Education and training firm IndiaCan's CEO Sharad Talwar holds a different view.

"It is an 'international' certificate as it involves thirdparty, external verifiers who come from the UK. These are experienced people who have tested across different markets,'' he says.

Sooner than later, it is clear that certification will become the norm. That pressure is felt even at rural, mid-size training ventures. Take Gram Tarang Employment Training Services, which operates in the Naxalism-affected areas of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. It was forced to get certification from the National Council of Vocational Training and has also tied up with Meritract of Australia that does third-party testing, as also the Indian Institute of Welding. New Delhi-based B-ABLE, part of the microfinance organisation BASIX, has tied up with industry leaders for certification: Larsen & Toubro for construction and Tata Motors for the auto sector.

India's newfound push on skilling could help it follow the South Korean or even German models where an intense vocational focus in education and training helped the countries rapidly expand their economies. If the dozens of training institutes mushrooming in India can deliver it a skills edge, the country could reap benefits of its demographic dividend. Else, India better get ready to deal with a demographic disaster.

VALUE PLUS

Wednesday, January 29, 2014