The Hindu Business Line : Will IT bring about changes in campus calendar?

YOUR next-door neighbour's son is ecstatic. He has an offer letter from one of India's top software services firms. The only puzzling factor is, he is expected to join only by the end of September. That is more than three months away. And before you can get over this puzzle, he tells you some of his friends have been given dates that are much later than his!

Surprising? No. IT companies are always in the news with the number of people they hire through the year. Some of them hire huge numbers straight out of engineering colleges. But their training and other infrastructure can support only so many at a time. Hence the system of staggered induction.

But companies want this to change. They want to be able to meet manpower demand across the year and want to make more efficient use of their training infrastructure.

And to the employee fresh out of college, it could mean three more months' salary, in the least.

The solution? Companies now want the academic system to throw up two batches graduating every year: one as usual in summer and one in December.

Says Bhaskar Das, Vice-President, Human Resources, Cognizant Technology Solutions, "We are talking to select academic institutions that are open to the idea of having two batches coming out every year."

He declined to comment on the identity of those institutions, but added that it was easier for the industry to deal with autonomous institutes.

Asked if this would stretch all the way back to the school system whose academic year ends in summer, he said, "We needn't go so far back into the system. We'd be happy to see institutes becoming flexible enough to offer electives early in the course. They just need to ensure that the course ends in three years and a half instead of the usual four, without compromising on quality of education."

But some institutions such as BITS, Pilani, already offer such flexibility to students, where they can accelerate by taking on more study load they feel they can take per semester.

Mr Das says, "True. But we need more institutions to do that to meet the IT industry's manpower demand." Other companies too are interested in the idea.

In fact, Infosys Technologies has already written to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). According to Mr Mohandas Pai, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys, "We have raised the issue with the AICTE to have two batches graduating during the year like the ICAI. India needs this kind of flexibility."

But it's not as if it's mayhem with the current system though. Says Mr Laxman Badiga, Chief Executive Officer for Talent Transformation & Staffing, Wipro Technologies, "We have built our model around the existing scholastic year and are able to manage the influx, through a combination of staggered joining dates and by building infrastructure to manage the training of large numbers of people. Colleges currently have completion dates ranging from June through August and September, which allows us to phase in our new employees."

Asked if that meant that a new twice a year batch would not make a difference, he said, "If there are two batches, we will accordingly schedule for the talent."

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