The shortage of professionals in theIT industry is acute and soft skill training modules and communication skills development, usually resorted to by colleges in the last semester, can do little to resolve this, many industry experts feel.
Such programmes don't fundamentally solve the problem of candidates, especially from Tier 2 and 3 colleges, who have trouble expressing freely in English, they say.
"Efforts in the final year alone are not going to help .In fact ,they put a lot of pressure on candidates who start viewing them as serious, in surmountable problems which they have to care of, in an interview, along with their core skills," said T Ramkumar, recruitment head at TCS. He was speaking at a seminar where the shortage of professionals in the IT industry , especially in terms of quality, and the ways to resolvethe problem were discussed.
Many colleges conduct soft skills training in the last semester, focused on placement. Such programmes, many feel, should be held from the first semester to be meaningful. Last semester training is too little ,too late, they say.
At a time when the demand of manpower was increasing and new fields where freshers could be employed were being introduced, experience had become secondary, said XSA Charles, head of performance and talent management at Capgemini India.
"Earlier, we never used to hire freshers. Today, there is a tremendous need to hire freshers," he said.
Many say the gap is more on the quality side and in aligning industry expectations with the educational system. "I have seen multiple situations in our company where toppers picked from campuses have failed whereas students with average academic background have gone beyond our expectations," said Anbu Rathinavel, senior vice-president and dean of Nalanda Corporate University of Polaris, an IT services firm.
"Gap in the industry is huge and it will probably continue to increase," said Senthil Nayagam, vice-president of key account and Hexawarsity at Hexaware. "There is only so much a 3-6 month training can do. It cannot replace the 4 years spent in college when they shouldhaveideally pickedup these skills."
Colleges are trying everything but the demand-supply gap is so large that companies are actually not able to meet the recruitment targets. "We have not met our recruitment numbers for the last 7 years," said Benedict Arockiasamy, director of talent development at CSS Corp, an IT services company.
Sujit Kumar, location head (HR) of Infosys, said there was a huge change in the situation in the last 10 years. "Ten years ago the question was how do I reject the candidate. The question nowadays is how do I select the candidate. We are under more pressure than colleges to find all the talent we need. And still, we are having a hard time finding it," said Kumar.
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