Fighting the talent paradox

EDUCATION Novel means are being devised to help India's recruitment-level talent crunch, not all effective.

Even as IIM grads command eyepopping starting salaries from foreign banks, lakhs of graduates all over the country find they cannot manage to get even simple white-collar jobs.

One reason, say observers, is a yawning mismatch between what these graduates are trained for, and what business actually needs. The government's education policy, goes this line of argument, has simply failed to deliver the vocational training that would put people into actual jobs. Hence the talent paradox.

Could the gap be filled by private sector training outfits? They are certainly trying, going by the huge increase in specialised courses being offered by a wide assortment of private coaching centres and education institutions across the country.

According to Sanjeev Bikchandani, CEO, naukri.com, the demand for trained professionals in sectors like telecom, retailing, IT & ITES, hospitality and financial services is huge, and growing by 20-25 per cent every year. Many corporates have taken to setting up training modules themselves.

Another alterative is to sponsor training programmes run in partnership with established educational institutes. Bharti School of Telecommunication, Technology and Management, which offers post-graduate programmes in telecom technologies, for example, is run in alliance with IIT Delhi, and is supported not just by the Bharti group but also by others in the business: Siemens, Compaq, Ericsson and Motorola.

With the job market in boom, expect even more specialised diplomas to get off the mark. And the trend is catching fever even in smaller cities, where private education players such Rai Foundation are busy opening branches to attract students for job-oriented diplomas.

The demand has grown so intense of late that Rai is coming up with compressed diplomas, starting this session at the Delhi branch (and expected to roll out to 20 cities by next year), to ensure that recruitment demand is satisfied. These can be attained over intensive course sessions spanning just 48 weeks "" instead of two years.

Rai's courses span the fields of hospitality and tourism, fashion technology, air and maritime, design, engineering and architecture, media and communication.

According to Vinay Rai, founder chairman, Rai Foundation, these are money-back courses too. Fail to find employment after doing the diplomas, and you have the course fees refunded (at Rs 1.2 lakh, on average, that's not money to trifle with).

To observers and rivals, that sounds like a gimmick better suited to some kind of mail-order gizmo offer than an education. To Rai, a long-time advocate of a private market for education unfettered by government regulation, it is an expression of his institute's confidence in its ability to meet market needs.

"These courses have been designed in such a fashion that students find jobs as soon as they pass out. That's why 90 per cent of the courses are based on practicals and only 10 per cent on theory," says Rai.

So, are private educational ventures the answer? "Specialised diplomas are okay," says Bikchandani, "but whether the dearth of talent is met depends on the quality of the courses and students."