The Hindu Business Line : For that finish

Finishing Schools - which turn their pupils into accomplished social assets - have been around for a long time now. They seek to give that sense of `completion' to the educational experience.

Taking a practical leaf out of this concept is the IT sector, which is battling talent shortfall, both in terms of number and quality.

Finishing Schools help the IT industry by providing `industry-ready' students with the necessary soft skills, says a senior official of a software company. "Give me a person with good soft skills, I can make him a professional. He/she need not be very good in software, which we can teach." Most software companies are looking to use the services of Finishing Schools, says an industry watcher.

Nasscom drive

In the IT context, the Finishing School concept is being jointly driven by Nasscom, the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and National Institute of Technology (NIT). As part of their initiative, pilot courses are to be conducted in eight centres — IIT-Roorkee and seven NITs, Calicut, Durgapur, Kurushetra, Jaipur, Surathkal, Tiruchi and Warangal.

Growing need

The Indian IT industry has grown its revenues ten-fold in the past decade, to $47.8 billion in 2006-07, from $4.8 billion in 1997-98. Its contribution to the country's GDP (gross domestic product) increased to 5.4 per cent from 1.2 per cent in the same period. "We are confident that the industry will achieve its ambitious target of $60 billion in exports in 2010," the Nasscom President, Kiran Karnik, has said. Annually, India contributes about ten lakh graduates and four lakh engineers to the talent pool but a big chunk of them are not employable rightaway. This, coupled with the likely shortage of about five lakh technology professionals by 2010, is looming large over the Indian IT sector, Karnik, however, cautioned recently. Going by the current trend, the top five Indian IT companies are likely to hire around one-lakh employees in the current fiscal.

College campuses have been the main source for recruitment. Finishing Schools can help groom those rejected at campus level so that they become employment-fit, says a software official.

Learning the finer points

Ganesh Chella, founder of Totus Consulting, a human resource solutions provider, says around 25 per cent of students have inherent strength, but fall short when it comes to presentation. A large number of people seeking employment are `first generation' job seekers from families that do not have a work culture. Such students do not understand the finer points about work culture - how to work, to be disciplined, to not abstain from work without prior notice. Such things are taught at Finishing Schools, he says. A number of small entrepreneurs have started Finishing Schools, and in Chennai alone there are nearly 40 freelancers helping software companies train students in soft skills, he says.

The Cognizant way

Cognizant Technology Solutions, the US-based software company with development centres in India, annually visits around 150 engineering institutions for campus recruiting. It limits itself to this number for `cost of search' reasons. Cognizant now works with 3Edge Solutions, a Chennai-based Finishing School, to get `ready-to-work' graduates outside these 150 institutions, according to the company's President and Managing Director, R. Chandrasekaran.

3Edge signs up students from institutions that Cognizant does not directly recruit from its campus programme and provides 8-11 weeks of training with emphasis on developing behavioural, communication and team oriented-skills. This is in addition to building an ability to synthesise their technical and analytical skills with industry-standard tools, methodology and frameworks.

Students are screened based on their academic performance, problem-solving skills and ability to learn. Each participant spends more than 80 per cent of the programme duration in "learning by doing" than in classrooms sessions, he says. Cognizant helps 3Edge in curriculum and shares its methodologies to make the curriculum relevant to the needs of the industry. Once the students complete the training offered by 3Edge they are made available to Cognizant for placement, "if and only if" they are found to adhere to Cognizant standards and are "a strategic fit" in all aspects.

According to Prasad Kolisetty, Director, 3Edge, the institute also provides `ready-to-work' graduates to companies such as Cap Gemini and Bangalore-based Comat.

In India, there are at least a dozen reputed Finishing Schools, which could potentially add around 40 per cent to the available talent pool. A client can save three months of training time by using the services of Finishing Schools.

Scalability to meet the requirements of the IT industry would be a major challenge for Finishing Schools. Clients do not want 10-20 students, but in the hundreds, he says.

"The difference between training institutes such as NIIT and Aptech and 3Edge is that it is more of an industry initiative." The entire programme is delivered by industry professionals with IT experience and seeks to expose students to a real-life project environment over a period of two to three months, says Chandrasekaran.

Giving the grooming

NIIT has placed around 3,500 `industry-ready' graduates, including engineering, with companies such as TCS, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL, says a senior official of the institute, C. Murugan.

To clients such as HCL, Wipro and NIIT Technologies, the institute offers students with specific domain expertise such as Java and .NET. Also, these clients at times approach NIIT to provide 100 to 150 readily employable students, he says.

For a few clients, NIIT acts as an extended HR and is involved in pre-selection and pre-placement of students. While the best students (creamy layer) are readily employed, students with `marginal deficiency', such as perhaps in communication, undergo training at NIIT to become employable. In 1995, there were around 95,000 engineering seats available in the country. This number has increased to around five lakh now, but only about a lakh land jobs. The institute picks up some of the `unemployable' graduates and offers them three-and-half-months' full-time programme that includes IT knowledge and soft skills. At the end of the programme, most of the students are placed in the IT industry, he says.

Aptech has introduced 100-hour training in English and workplace training as part of its three-year IT training programme. This is in addition to the personality development programme, according to Sonia Narula, Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Aptech.

In a survey last year, Aptech's clients emphasised the need for English and workplace training among students. The course was accordingly revamped to meet the demands of the industry to get `industry ready' students.

"We are polishing the rough edges out and giving the industry the right kind of students with not only hardware and software skills, but also soft skills, including communication," she says.

Aptech conducts research every year to ascertain the trends/concerns of the industry. The industry findings this year indicate that poor communication skills, inadequate domain knowledge and inadequate workplace skills are the top three concerns of recruiters, she says.

raja@thehindu.co.in

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