Nine point something

When Varun told me that he would like to work with me, I almost jumped out of my seat with joy. Who would not like to work with this bright young man? He is barely one year into the industry, working for an auto giant and getting a good package. This happened a few months ago. Varun was quickly followed by Jain, Praneeth and a few others. And, then there are the others who left their jobs with a hefty pay package to be on their own.

Who are these boys and what are my concerns? Varun and company belong to the “nine point something” club. They are very bright, hard working, focused, articulate, energetic and knowledgeable.

To top it all, they have a passion for engineering and science. These are the students who challenge our intellect and keep us teachers on our toes. They are the ones who provide the excitement in the class or the lab and push a teacher or a researcher that much more.

UNWELCOMING INDUSTRY

In my teaching career spanning 25 years, I have not seen these students look to Indian industry for a career.

The US has welcomed and embraced them greedily and they have become a part of the IIT Diaspora. Many have become big names in the academia as well. With the charm of the US waning, now the star students want to be in India to make a career. They are available to Indian Industry for the first time. But India Inc does not seem ready to recognise them.

The worry is that these 9-pointers are getting disenchanted with industry. Talks to them, and their stories are surprisingly identical, though they worked in different companies that can be termed large national and multinational giants.

The simple fact is that the Indian industry does not know how to handle them. Their talent was not identified, nor their passion nurtured. In many instances, the companies did not even have a programme or a project that could challenge their intellect. Indian industry seems to be bereft of a middle management cadre that can mentor such talent. The industry set-up seems rather socialistic — treating every fresher equally. The system does not seem to recognise the exceptional talent that can make a big difference to a company’s technology. No doubt these are large organisations, but should their system be so inefficient as not to spot talent?

I was especially exercised, and decided to give vent by writing, when the topper in my class could not get a good engineering job in India. According to the student, no big company wanted him, as the human resource departments of these companies felt that he was too hot a property and could not be retained.

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT FLAW

Interestingly, for years, corporates have used talented management graduates. B-School graduates have been nurtured, nay pampered. Their career path has been well laid out and their ability to take up challenging assignments converted into fairy tales.

One wonders if this is simply because their output can be easily measured — in terms of the money they have made. And, industry does not have the ability to measure the long- or short-term impacts of their engineering and technology recruits? Certainly, none of these giants seems to have a programme/project to use the talent of the 9-pointers.

Middle management must play a vital role in using the 9-pointers. Yet, this cadre does not seem to posses the skills, the patience and/or the knowledge to do so. These students are trained in engineering science. If this knowledge is to be useful, they need to convert it into technology, that is, a set of procedures for design, manufacture including equipment/artefacts, and so on. Conversion of engineering science to technology is a tortuous path paved with myriad details. The devil, which resides in these details, needs its food, called time. And, herein lies the rub.

Middle management seems to handle development projects through bar charts and power points, a procedure perfected by management gurus. There is no time for the detail. Deliverables dominate presentations and at the end of this important stage of converting engineering science into technology, the pride of work of many of these 9-pointers gets ignored.

Middle management needs the knowledge to understand the engineering science and technological requirements. Do we have such a talented middle management?

HR FAILING

In some measure, it is also a failure of HR departments. It requires planning and that extra effort to retain these bright young men and women, rather than those who are merely looking for a job. HR departments must recognise that for the 9-pointers, salary is not the deciding factor.

Indeed, one 9-pointer preferred to work in an IIT lab for Rs 15,000 a month, quitting an MNC that was paying Rs 1 lakh! Handling this set may be a new challenge for the HR, but they must learn to. The financial sector and some consulting companies seem to have mastered the art of using the 9-pointers.

Even the students appear excited with their work. As one 9-pointer said, the firm “applies all the math I have learnt”. It is time the industry woke up. It must have a policy to nurture such talent. It needs to extend the lessons learnt in handling B-school graduates to these 9-pointers. In a nation that romanticises “5-point something” as heroes, it is a pity that the real heroes, who can make a difference to society, the “9-point something” group, remains unsung, unnoticed.

(The author is with Department of Engineering Design, IIT, Madras.)

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