Book Description

“A highly successful organisation is built on the strengths of exceptional people. No matter how much technology and mechanisation is developed, no organisation could survive and prosper without them”. --- Luszez and Kleiner, 2001 The most important corporate resource over the next few years will be talent: smart, sophisticated business people who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile. And even as the demand for talent goes up, the supply of it will be going down. This seems to particularly hold true in case of the IT-ITES (Information Technology and Information Technology- Enabled Services) industry in India which requires high quality and highly skilled labour force to cater to the rapidly increasing global demand for software services but is currently facing an increasing shortage of skills supply. Moreover, due to shortages of skilled workers, high turnover rates, and rapid business growth in the service sectors, it has been noted that recruiting, selecting, and placing applicants are among the top three priorities of human resource professionals. Since the IT industry in India is faced with these three challenges, recruitment and selection comprises an important human resource practice in this industry. Further, in this industry, human resources comprise both the raw material and the 'technology', and are therefore of prime importance. As India completes the transition from being an agrarian economy to being a full-fledged, first-world economy, operating at the leading edge of contemporary technology, the IT sector is emerging as major driver of the economy. The Indian IT industry comprises of domestic software and services firms as well as foreign firms looking to consolidate their presence in India owing to the increasing cost pressures in US and Europe. This has increased the need to setup in-house development centers or outsource to third-party service providers in low cost countries such as India. IT and IT enabled services include a wide range of services from back-office data entry and processing to customer contact services, corporate support functions, knowledge support functions and research and design activities. As per the latest Forbes Research, India now controls 44 per cent of the global offshore outsourcing market for software and back office services. As per Nasscom estimates, it is projected to grow to 51 per cent. If this growth is sustained, Nasscom has estimated that there will be a potential shortfall of above 2, 10,000 IT and ITES professionals in India by the year 2012 and demand will out-pace the supply. Though the Indian IT industry is in a strong position to leverage this global software opportunity (as India currently has one of the world’s largest, most qualified pools of scientific and engineering manpower), this growing global demand is not only for numbers but also for appropriately skilled, industry-oriented professionals as companies are further scaling their operations and offering high value-added services which involve higher levels of technology and more specialized, higher-end services. Hence, firms which want to maintain their competitive advantage have to carefully recruit and select the most suitable out of the large pool of available manpower. Moreover, according to a recent study by McKinsey & Co., although the potential supply of talent in low wage countries such as India is large and growing rapidly, only a fraction of the job candidates could successfully work at a foreign company on account of their limited suitability i.e. though there are many candidates with the technical skills to fill a position, they may not have the cultural skills to “fit in” with the organisation. The same issue is also faced by large globally competitive domestic Indian firms who are competing for the same pool of talent and skills as their foreign counterparts to remain competitive and survive in global and domestic markets.