The Blue Ocean for Talent

Widening our Talent Pool

Despite being a country of 1.4 billion people, with nearly half of the population armed with degrees, we face a scarcity of talent at different levels in various organisations across the spectrum. Start-ups like NGIVD face this the most, but when it comes to getting competent people, everyone faces an uphill task.

Because there is always a temptation to hire people with experience, the entrant market is cornered by ‘proven talent’. However, this may not necessarily be the best talent, and there are more than a few who have just mastered the résumé-interview, with some known companies featuring in their résumé. In the past year, our aggressive ramp-up ended up having to exit nearly 25% of the ‘proven talent’ as they failed to light up to even minimal levels.

We at NGIVD are now working through this challenge in four ways:

1. Bringing in more freshers

Those fresh out of college with professional degrees are cost effective, enthusiastic, eager to learn and more amenable to fitting in culturally. Also, if we don’t train fresh recruits, we will be at the mercy of the same old talent pool who use the talent scarcity as a way of upping their asking salaries. Besides, if freshers don’t get work experience, how will they integrate into the work force?

2. Having an apprentice and summer training program to identify potential hires among freshers 

This is in conscious resistance to the urge for speed that sometimes makes us avoid freshers.

3. A strong orientation program for new hires

Few companies invest in interns or have a formal orientation and training program. When I joined Eli Lilly as a salesperson 25 years ago, my past academic background (college degrees in History) and work experience (in the Indian civil services and consulting) had not trained me on scientific selling. However, Lilly’s exemplary training boot camps ensured that we had the confidence, knowledge, skills and understanding of resources to do our job. The training programme required us being out of the field for one month, but that delay and opportunity cost was more than made up by equipping us to hit the ground running. Also, weak performance was weeded out at the orientation stage itself, without risking negative market or customer perception driven by a weak representative on the field. I am convinced that a strong orientation programme will bring in freshers, expand our recruitment base and eventually provide a far better outcome regardless of function.

4. Building a strong bench strength of supervisors 

Fresh talent needs good coaching and mentoring. A strong manager can enable more inexperienced people with the right attitude to be integrated into the workforce.

Nations that lead in growth continuously focus on Total Factor Productivity (TFP)— improving the skills of their workforce at all levels, especially at the entrant stage. Hopefully, with these initiatives, we can mitigate the talent challenge at NGIVD and in our small way help maximise our demographic dividend—by improving the employability of our youth.