Talent Development

Talent Development – From the other side.

Dear Readers,

Having been to various colleges in Tier-2/3 cities for hiring, I wanted to share few of my thoughts on how students can take self-initiative and build their employability skills. 

In my experience, I’ve seen these students to be extremely good in many aspects but lacking in certain basic employability skills.  The one that is equally important to showcase their talents and get selected.  Say for example, a student without Basic English conversing / oral communication skills, however good he may be in academics, will not be able to articulate himself,

So, it is needless to stress upon the importance of these skills. 

Help yourself - Approach to build Employability skills:

1. Self-Initiative:

Say, your House is on fire and you are stuck inside.  What would you do and what are the various options that you will look at.

1. Call up the Fire station and wait for them to come and rescue you and put off the fire.

2. Shout for help from your neighborhood and wait for the help to come.

3. Try to save yourself first. While you wait for the help from the fire station to arrive, take the help of neighborhood and try to put off the fire.

The third approach is the best and wise one and I am sure that anyone would look at the 3^rd approach and it will be without any analysis at all.

Similar kind of approach in terms of self-initiative is required to start building these skills too instead of waiting for someone to tell you or train you.  That someone could be your own placement wing, college or corporate initiative.

2. Skill Development – Long-term Process:

Say, you are a farmer and you are doing agriculture.  For any crop to be cultivated, the process involves putting the seeds, watering on a regular basis, putting fertilizers and taking care right from the beginning to 3 or 6 months so that it grows fully and in a healthy way to give the expected yield. 

Similarly, say you are an athlete or a tennis player.  Your sports skill and capability is “Average” or “Above Average” and you want to move to “Good”. Filling the skill gap requires daily practice for considerable amount of time for 1 or 2 years.  It just cannot happen overnight.

In the above instances, is it possible to cut short the process and get the expected results?  Is it possible to speed up the crop growth in just one week by doing everything in one week that you needed to do on a daily basis for 3 or 6 months?  Instead of daily practice for 1-2 years, can you shorten and practice for just 2 months and become a good athlete?

The answer is apparently a Big NO and it’s just not possible at all.  Stephen Covey, in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People calls it “Principles” or “Natural law”.  He says that any growth and Development is a step-by-step process and there is no shortcut to it.  A thousand mile journey starts with the first step.

Development of employability skills too is a long-terms process.  One cannot learn it in just couple of weeks or months before the campus recruitment.  If not in the school, one has to start working on improving these skills right from day-1 in colleges as you prioritize and study any of the other subjects. 

3. Some Workable Suggestions:

For instance, what kind of cumulative learning that you could have, say if you plan to learn one vocabulary a day or week, one grammar rule for every week, reading one book for every 3 months, reading newspaper on a daily basis for 30 minutes, listening to English news for 30 minutes on a daily basis etc., The results would be phenomenal.

I’ve read somewhere that Chinese/Japanese read comic books to pick up and improve their English communication skills.  That’s not a short cut but an innovative method to pick up and improve your English communication.  Comics have simple sentences and commonly used simple vocabularies. You may look at reading comic books too on a regular basis. You can learn how to construct simple sentences with commonly used words. A simple yet an effective way to improve one’s communication skills.

Remember, communication skill alone is not enough.  You need to equip yourself with few other basic skills like how to attend interviews, Group discussion etc., You may form “peer groups” consisting of your own classmates and engage yourself in regular group discussions and mock interviews.  You may also take the help of HR persons who have visited your college for campus. 

Have a workable schedule and start it off without procrastination. 

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 

4. Outlier – The 10,000 Hour Rule:

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, talks about an extensive research that was done covering Outliers in various field. (Outliers are those who have achieved exceptionally well in their chosen field than the rest of the people).

One of the findings that he talks about is all the Outliers put in extra hours of practice on a daily basis than others because of which they are able to master whatever they do and they do exceptionally better than others. 

For instance, Bill Gates had the opportunity and was so passionate about computers that he was spending his time almost day and night doing just programming. 

The research says that to reach that kind of mastery or those who have reached that kind of mastery level have spent around 10,000 hours on learning and practice.  Looks like that is the kind of hard work required to become an “Outlier”.  The common thread across all the Outliers is the 10,000 hour mark.

The point to be kept in mind once again for building employability skills is, one cannot cut short the learning process.  It’s a step-by-step approach and a long-term process.

With such an approach, you can become an Outlier too.

5. Success Stories of some of the SMALL Town Persons in Corporate World:

He was born and brought up in a small town in Orissa. Since there were no primary schools, he did not go to school till the age of 8 and he studied in Oriya medium. One of the routine activities that he had to do was to read out the English Newspapers to his Father on a daily basis which helped him to master the language and connect with the world too.

He started his career as a Clerk in a Government set-up.  He is the one who co-founded Mind Tree, one of the leading IT organizations in India. He has published some of the best books in Management and values like High performance entrepreneurs, The Professional, Go Kiss the World. All are amazing books. He is Subroto Bagchi.. He is an inspiration to Tier-2/3 students that they can make it Big too.

The second person that I want to talk about was born in a village in Andhra Pradesh. He did not go to School till the age of 8 years. He failed in 10th Standard and took two attempts to clear it. He studied in Telugu Medium. Later on, he went on to complete his PG Degree and Doctorate in HR from XLRI. He has authored 8 books and published over 60 papers. He is Srinivas Rao Kandula who is heading the entire world-wide HR for iGATE Patni.

To conclude, Coming from Tier-2/3 cities need not be a disadvantage at all.  And most importantly, it is not enough if you have incredible talents. You need to present it with good confidence and proper polish too. 

Remember, there is no short-cut to it and it is a long-term process. 

No Pain… No Gain…

Everyone is a Leader

Dear Readers,

I’ve written this posting on “Organization Culture” based on my observation and experience at Shell Outlets in Chennai few years ago. Wish you all a very happy reading.

A strong Customer-centric culture across the levels and Outlets:

It’s always been a good experience for me to fill Fuel in Shell Outlets than in any other place in Chennai.  You must be wondering what’s so special about Shell that you don’t get elsewhere.

In Shell, you will see that you are attended to personally right from entry to exit with proper instructions and courtesy.  The moment you enter the Outlet, there will be someone to Greet you promptly in Tamil (Regional Language) first and then direct you as to which track you should take to fill Fuel.  There will be someone in each Track to greet you again very promptly and to guide and instruct you to park your vehicle properly before filling Fuel.  In case you are on the phone, you will be instructed politely not to use it for safety reasons by the attendant.  After filling the Fuel, billing takes place and simultaneously they’ll clean your windshield mirror.  Once they are done with these activities, you will be directed to the Exit or Air filling station in a particular lane. In case you are going to fill in air, you will be directed to follow proper queue and filling takes place strictly on first-cum-first-serve basis and no one solicits or takes any tips at any point. 

If you are going in a Two wheeler, you will be asked politely to put center stand and stay little away from the bike while filling the fuel.  When one of my curious colleagues asked the attendant for the reasons as to why one should stay away, the attendant was aware of the reasons and she could explain confidently without any frown or hesitation that the reason was to avoid fire accidents that might take place due to spillage of small amount of fuel on the engine.

This is the quality of service that I’ve experienced consistently in their Outlets, besides good quality of Fuel. 

It really makes me think as how Shell has been quite successful in nurturing and building such a Customer-focused Culture and that too with the workforce which is not that educated. How they are able to inculcate such a strong flawless Culture amongst each and every employee, right from the Front-line attendant to their supervisors.

My observation about Shell outlet is Everyone is Passionate about their job and they are very clear about what’s expected out of them not just in terms of work but also customer focus and satisfaction.  It’s also a “Leading-by-example” leadership style that’s being demonstrated by every Supervisor in various levels in the hierarchy. There are norms for everyone at every level and everyone is inspired to accept and follow the norms, especially when they see it being demonstrated by their supervisors and all the other peers on a daily basis with each and every Customer.

Norms are the rules and any deviation from their cultural norms by anyone at any level is not acceptable. When there is a deviation, there is a timely intervention by the immediate supervisor or the co-employees too for immediate correction.

There is also a shared commitment and understanding of the Organizations values (Customer focus and satisfaction) by every employee at all levels. Every supervisor is aware of the vision of his role and connects with the vision of his department. And every employee acts like a leader in his own role and in doing his work with proper understanding in terms of Customer focus or bigger goal of the department.

The culture is so strong that when a new person joins, he will either be part of the culture or out of it. 

Then I realized that in Shell, everyone is a leader at his own capacity.  That’s what everyone truly believes in. 

The points that we can infer are:

- It’s very much true that your competitor can copy your technology but he cannot copy your culture and the people as they are the backbone or pillars of the Organisation.

- Leading by example is always an effective leadership style to get everyone to follow the organizational norms and thus build a very strong organization culture.

- Every employee in supervisory and leadership position should share the Organization’s vision and percolate it down.  He should be a role model for the down the line employees.

- Every employee in supervisory and leadership position, whatever be the capacity or level in the hierarchy, has equal accountability not just in work-related deliverables but also in providing effective leadership to his team as well. 

- He should be a change-agent and align his team to the organizational values and Culture.

- And finally, the most important one is, every employee has to be Passionate, understand his role and align himself with the bigger goals and values and comply with the organizational norms. There is no point in hiring someone who is just good in his job but not passionate about it.

To conclude, it’s a collective responsibility to nurture and build a Culture that we want to. 

Everyone has a role to play and be a Leader.

           

Looking forward to your Comments and thoughts…. 

Talent Management

Dear Readers,

Pls. check out the new posting of Talent Managment wherein i've tried to look at from macro-perspective and shared my thoughts on "Unconventional Talent Management". Am sure you would enjoy reading this update.

India is a country with a population of more than 1.1 Billion and it is projected that we will surpass China, the most populous country in the world now, by 2025. India is also a young country with more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 years and two thirds under the age of 35 years.

However, on the flip side of it, the gross enrollment ratio in India is 15% of its population and that’s what is available as a Talent pipeline across the Country.  The worlds average GER is 24% and its 18% among the developing economies.  While 15% is a big number considering the population, we all know that not every one of them is employable and the employable Talent could be just 25%-26% from the 15%. 

So it is that small pie that most of us are looking at and obviously the demand is outstripping the supply. 

Shortage of Talent – is it a reality or myth

We’ve opened up the Indian Market for Multinational players to set up their shops.  Our industrial growth has gone up drastically. We’ve seen IT revolution taking place in the 1990s.

Our GDP was hovering in the lower range and it was just 3.5% till 1980.  Subsequent to our Liberalization policy in 1992, we have grown consistently year on year. We have recorded more than 7%, the highest GDP rate after our Independence, for 3 subsequent years from 1994-95 to 1996-97. We’ve recorded highest growth rate of 9.7 in 2007-08.  We came out relatively unscathed even during the last recession.  It’s estimated that we’ll record 7% growth in 2012 and our economy is on good track.

We know that all these activities provided lot of impetus and fuelled our economic growth and it also lead to huge demand for talent.  While the demand has grown in multi-fold, the amount and quality of supply has remained the same, resulting in gap in demand and supply.

Demand and supply is the Universal law that governs almost every aspect in life.  Demand and supply has got direct relationship.  When demand outstrips the supply, the cost always goes up. For instance, we would have seen the global trends of Precious metal, crude oil, stocks or real estate or anything going up or down purely and directly in proportion to the demand.

Hence the Talent pool, one of the 5 Ms cannot be an exception. 

Turning the talent management approach little unconventional to tap the remaining 75% will make all the difference and there would not be real shortage of talent in India.

Necessity is the mother of invention- Unconventional Talent Management

Looking at the small pie of 25% of the employable talent is not going to help and we need some novel approach and unconventional Talent Management to tap the talent from the untapped big pie, 75%.  Few have already invented the wheel that I would like to talk about it.

     1. Catch them Young and train them: A model adopted and tried successfully in manufacturing set-ups more than decade ago and much before the buzzword, unconventional Talent Management.  There are Companies that have tried out hiring 10^th and 12^th pass outs in large numbers and got them trained to the required technical skill level successfully. 

      2. Talents in Tier-2/3 Cities -  Incredible Talent without Polish:

I’ve first heard this wording from Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member of Planning commission in a NASSCOM Meet recently.  Though the meaning is quite obvious, those of us who have been to Tier-2/3 cities and interested with the students over there could very much relate to the meaning in true sense.  

In my experience, I’ve seen these students to be academically bright with impressive marks/ scores, very studious, sincere, dedicated, and very good attitude. 

But the polish they lack is basic employability skills in terms of basic English communication skills, interview and GD skills etc.,

3.     College – Corporate partnering:

This can be a kind of Train the Trainer model wherein you evolve a curriculum for students and get the faculty trained who in turn would train their students.  A similar kind model was adopted (for BPO Operation) in one of the Organizations where I worked about 5-6 years ago.  This model was evolved and run successfully with real quantifiable results. 

Whether you recruit all of them or not, end of the day, you are creating a pool of employable and trainable talents who would be able to find a job on their own. Having a centralized body that can standardize the curriculum (IT/KPO/BPO) will help.  Otherwise, it’s likely that the college / students may find themselves having more than one Curriculum to study.

4.     Differently-Abled Talent pool:

This is another Talent pool with lots of scope for hiring and engagement.

I remember the first job fair that we organized about 7 years ago in close association with Ability Foundations for Differently abled people.  The response was huge. They all demonstrated tons of determination to participate and to prove their mettle.  Lots of Corporates participated in real true sense. 

Some kind of awareness and hand-holding in terms of how to engage this talent pool will be indeed helpful. 

5.     House wives

In one of my earlier organizations where I worked, this model was evolved and pilot run was done for BPO projects by involving the housewives of employees working in one of the large manufacturing set-ups.  The production set-up was done in their employees’ colony.  The job was deskilled and training was imparted.  This model indeed turned out to be very successful. 

6.     Rural Talents:

This model was also initiated in the same BPO organization about 5-6 years ago. This too turned out to be very successful by deskilling the jobs and continuous training.  

I’ve just briefed whatever approaches that I’ve heard of / that we’ve tried ourselves. They are probably just tip of the ice berg and we may expect lot more novel approaches in future. What is said as impossible is being tried and accomplished successfully elsewhere in the world.  For instance, I’ve heard of an IT company that hires school drop-outs and trains them.  A very bold move!!!

Unconventional Talent Management is going be the order of the day in future.

Governments Role in Talent Management:

The Indian government is planning to double the GER from 15% to 30% before 2020.  The 12^th five year plan which is underway will focus on three Key Areas and Education & Skill Development is one of them (the other two are Health and Infrastructure.) (Source Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member of Planning commission).  This gives lot of hope for the quality of education & Skill and the size of the talent pool to grow in line with the Business growth.

India as Global Talent Provider

The average age of Indian population by 2020 is expected to be around 29 years whereas it would be 39 years for China, 48 for Japan, 37 for USA and 48 for Europe.  Harnessing our Talent with required education and skills would become a Big Advantage for India and we could indeed become a Talent provider for the Globe.

Would appreciate your comments and Feedbacks..