Talent Scarcity – Thrashing It The Wipro Way

In the American court of law, it is essential to woo the jury. They are human beings, unmoved by facts and statistics. Lawyers hop from one end to the other, spinning relatable tales that inspire. Numbers show the truth, but analogies win cases. Wipro’s Global Head – Campus Hiring, Rajeev Singh wore the skin of such a lawyer when he opened the presentation.
 
-“There is no silver bullet to solve the problem of Talent Scarcity.”

In an ever so progressive world, without adequate talent, organizations fail to meet business goals, choking themselves to a halt. While some struggle to mitigate this internally, others overburden pre-existing employees to compensate for their dip in productivity. Simply put, talent is the oil to an organizational machine.

Is it the lack of availability of talent, or an inadequacy with our screening criteria? These questions soared up the priority list when the problem encroached into verticals beyond the IT industry. “Global mobility is one of the root causes,” cited Rajeev Singh. “Talent moves to countries with a better environment and pay. 1990 USSR aggressively blockaded talent within their country, but lost most of them as soon as the walls of communism fell apart.”

This wasn’t the only cause, however. Research revealed that of jobs available in 2013, 10-12% had not existed in 2006. Problems continued to mount when public and private universities failed to cope with high growth sectors, graduating students with an obsolete arsenal of skills.

With no relief in sight, Wipro moved to tackle the adversity head on. They worked to inspire change by actively beginning interactions with several universities across India and up-skilling those already in employment.

Wipro sought to uncover potential with their WASE (Wipro Academy of Software Excellence) & WiSTA (Wipro Software Technology Academy) even among those many considered unemployable. The idea was to groom talent by accepting that prospective recruits were not readily employable. Unsurprisingly, Rajeev also went on to talk about introducing industrial training within the academic curriculum for credits.

However, it is not just Wipro’s battle. By 2022, the automobile and transportation industry expects to create over a hundred million job roles, while retail and healthcare anticipate a combined twenty million increase. In an attempt to keep pace with the high-growth sectors, the Ministry of Labor and Employment published a National Skills Development Policy with a target to skill over five hundred million people by 2022.

“Increase internship opportunities, visit campuses for training teachers or students, encourage visits to corporate offices,” stressed Wipro’s Global Head for Campus Hiring. “I understand the difficulty in the matter, but if the management raises an issue, give me a call, and I’d be more than happy to make a comment on why we should do it.”

This article is based on Mettl’s Webinar with Rajeev Kumar, Global Head – Campus Hiring at Wipro, where he enlightened the audience on how big organizations like Wipro addresses their talent shortage problem and what enables them to hire quality hires for their organization.