THERE IS A HUGE TALENT GAP IN TERMS OF AVAILABILITY OF RIGHT TALENT AT THE BUYERS OR ENTERPRISE END
Anil Jalali, CHRO – India, Capgemini in an exclusive interview to Dataquest says that digital disruption is creating a pressing need for businesses around the world to evolve, there is a need of upskilling workforce with latest technologies to stay ahead
If you look at the ICT skills landscape, what according to you are the 2 challenges the industry is facing now?
As technology evolves, so do the skills needed in an increasingly digital world. According to a recent Capgemini study on Digital Talent Gap, there is a huge talent gap in terms of availability of right talent at the buyers or enterprise end. The talent gap in soft digital skills is more pronounced than in hard digital skills. The two soft digital skills in most demand are customercentricity and passion for learning and the two hard digital skills in most demand are cybersecurity and cloud computing.
This puts the onus on service providers like us to ensure that we have the best talent on board to help our clients meet their digital transformation goals. We have put huge emphasis today on the learning and development of digital skills in Capgemini. In 2017, over 60,000 underwent training in various emerging and digital technologies. Additionally, we are looking at lateral hires to meet the need for specialized digital skills. The Digital Disruption coupled with automation has completely changed the nature of tech skills required for today’s ICT jobs – as an organization how are you coping with sourcing the right skills? Given that the digital disruption is creating a pressing need for businesses around the world to evolve, there is a need of upskilling workforce with latest technologies to stay ahead of the curve. Capgemini in India is today the delivery backbone of the Group with our 50 percent of the workforce. As an organization, we are focusing on three key areas from a training perspective: New and emerging technologies: for building a future ready organization centered around the new and emerging technologies of digital, cloud, DevOps, cybersecurity and big data. Upskilling: proactive and ongoing career development and skills building (includes other technologies)
Need based training: project specific skill requirements. It is extremely vital to transform the profile of skills and competencies of our current workforce. If we look at the profile of our current skill sets majority are still in the areas of JAVA, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, and so on. We need to transform this and have equal or more number of employees with advanced skills in the areas of big data, analytics, cloud, etc. We are investing heavily on upskilling our employees in digital technologies like Cloud, IOT, Big Data & Analytics, among others.
Along with the Businesses and Service lines, we have identified a set of 122 courses that help employees build skills quickly (40 hours of training). These topics are the ones which are in demand by the projects. Each of these programs have rich content, assignments, projects and assessments – which help an employee gain hands-on skills in a quick and efficient manner.
Campus linkage: Given our focus on campus hiring in India we have identified 35 key engineering campuses with the aim of driving deeper engagement and raise our position as an employer of choice. We are working with these colleges across India through technical workshops, executive faculty training & development and internship programs to orient and create better alignment with the emerging skills needs in digital and making students relevant for hire. Therefore, the campus brand awareness is a great enabler for our overall sourcing requirement.
Capgemini in India is looking at a mix of fresh talent and experienced professional to cater to changing needs of our clients in this digital world. What are your top 2 priorities for your HR organization the ongoing year and what makes your company an employer of choice of ICT job aspirants? As a global IT services company our people are at the heart of our business. Our top 2 priorities in 2018 are: Enriching Employee Experience Continuous Reskilling & Hiring and driving internal career growth