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IT majors should focus on creating a talent pool to retain
BPO ...
Financial Express - Bombay,India
NEW DELHI, APRIL 6: India will need to focus its attention
on developing a strong IT workforce at a much greater rate
in an effort to retain the outsourcing opportunity that is
rapidly going to China, Philippines, Vietnam and eastern
Europe. The need of the hour, therefore, is for IT companies
to come together and participate with the government to
create a IT talent pool, Microsoft India chairman Ravi
Venkatesan said.
IBM had last week announced the launch of its academic
initiative to collaborate with select universities to train
over 75,000 students this year. Microsoft’s own Project
Shiksha aims to deliver IT literacy to over 80,000 teachers
and 3.5 million students, over the next five years.
According to Mr Venkatesan, Microsoft is now working with
Nasscom to initiate a collaborative effort in which all IT
firms can come together and launch a concerted initiative
for creating the requisite IT talent pool.
“All the companies, including Microsoft, are seeing pressure
because of this issue of too many jobs chasing too little
talent. Attrition rates have doubled during the last six
months compared to the previous six months or 12 months.
Salary increases are beginning to get very steep which is
causing companies to look at other offshore destinations
besides India, including China, Vietnam and Philippines,” Mr
Venkatesan told FE.
The short answer, according to Mr Venkatesan, is to turn out
much more talent. “While it is proven that the country’s
skilled and knowledge workers are behind the success stories
in the IT, BPO, pharma or even the manufacturing sectors,
NASSCOM has made estimates that India will have to educate
at leat two million additional IT workers over the next
eight years, if the country’s IT software and services
sector is to achieve an annual turnover of $70-80 billion in
2008,” he said.
“At present, 250,000 IT students are graduating every year
while the projected demand for trained IT professionals has
been estimated at over 400,000 per year,” Mr Venkatesan
said, adding, “we need to address the quality as well as
quantity of the talent pool.” A way forward, according to Mr
Venkatesan, would be for IT firms to come together and
launch a collaborative effort for creating the IT talent
pool. |
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