Widening the Talent Pool
India is home to a population of more than 1.4 billion people, with millions entering the workforce every year and a large proportion holding professional or academic qualifications. Yet, organisations across industries continue to face a persistent challenge: finding the right talent at the right level and developing people with the skills required for the future.
For start-ups and growing organisations such as NGIVD, this challenge can be particularly significant. As businesses scale rapidly, the need for competent, adaptable and motivated professionals grows just as quickly. The conventional approach to recruitment often places considerable emphasis on prior experience. While experience can certainly be valuable, hiring exclusively from the pool of “proven talent” can significantly narrow the recruitment funnel. More importantly, experience on a résumé does not always translate into the skills, attitude, adaptability and potential required to succeed in a new organisation.
NGIVD’s own experience has reinforced this perspective. During its aggressive growth phase, the organisation found that a significant proportion of experienced hires did not meet even the expected baseline of performance and ultimately had to exit the organisation. This experience has encouraged NGIVD to rethink the traditional approach to talent acquisition.
Rather than competing exclusively for a limited pool of experienced professionals, NGIVD is working towards widening its talent pool by creating opportunities for fresh talent, investing in training and developing stronger leadership capabilities. The approach is built around four key priorities.
1. Bringing More Freshers Into the Workforce
One of the most important steps NGIVD is taking is to increase the recruitment of fresh graduates and young professionals. Freshers bring several advantages to a growing organisation. They are often enthusiastic, eager to learn and open to new ways of working. They can also be more adaptable to an organisation’s culture, systems and processes when provided with the right guidance and training.
From an organisational perspective, developing fresh talent can also create a more sustainable talent pipeline. If companies continually recruit only from the existing pool of experienced professionals, the same limited talent pool becomes increasingly competitive, often resulting in higher salary expectations without necessarily guaranteeing better performance.
Building talent internally offers a different path. Fresh graduates need opportunities to gain their first meaningful professional experience. Without organisations willing to invest in early-career talent, the transition from education to employment becomes unnecessarily difficult. For NGIVD, hiring freshers is therefore not simply a cost-effective recruitment strategy. It is an opportunity to identify potential early, develop capabilities and build professionals who understand the organisation from the ground up.
2. Using Apprenticeships and Summer Training to Identify Potential
Recruiting freshers also requires organisations to look beyond traditional hiring methods. One way NGIVD is addressing this is through apprenticeship and summer training programmes designed to provide students and young professionals with exposure to the workplace.
Such programmes can serve two purposes.
- First, they provide students with practical exposure and help them understand the expectations of a professional environment.
- Second, they allow organisations to observe potential talent before making a full-time hiring decision.
Academic performance alone cannot always reveal whether an individual will become a successful professional. Factors such as curiosity, ownership, communication, problem-solving ability, resilience and willingness to learn can become much more visible when candidates are given real responsibilities. Apprenticeships and internships therefore create a valuable talent identification pipeline. For a growing organisation like NGIVD, this approach also helps reduce the pressure to make rushed hiring decisions simply because an immediate vacancy needs to be filled.
3. Building a Strong Orientation and Training Programme
Hiring the right people is only the beginning. Even talented professionals need context, knowledge, training and guidance before they can perform effectively in a specialised industry. This is particularly relevant in the healthcare and in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) sector, where professionals may need to understand products, technologies, laboratory workflows, customers, regulatory requirements and industry-specific applications. NGIVD therefore sees a strong employee orientation and training programme as an important part of its talent strategy.
A strong orientation programme can help new employees understand:
- The organisation’s vision and values
- Products and technologies
- Customers and market dynamics
- Roles and responsibilities
- Internal systems and processes
- Communication and professional expectations
- Available resources and support
- Performance expectations
The importance of structured training is well illustrated by the experience of senior professionals who have transitioned between industries or functions. For example, a professional joining a pharmaceutical or healthcare organisation may have strong academic qualifications and considerable professional experience, yet still require specialised training before being ready to engage effectively with customers.
A notable example comes from the experience of a senior professional who joined Eli Lilly as a salesperson after an academic background in History and previous experience in the Indian civil services and consulting. Despite having a strong educational and professional background, scientific selling was an entirely different discipline. The organisation’s intensive training boot camps provided the knowledge, skills, confidence and understanding of resources required for the role. Although the programme required significant time away from the field, the investment helped new employees become better prepared before interacting with customers.
This illustrates an important principle for NGIVD: The objective should not simply be to get employees into the field quickly. It should be to make them effective when they get there.
A structured orientation program can also help identify performance gaps early, before they affect customers, markets or the organisation’s reputation. For NGIVD, investing in training can therefore serve two purposes: developing talent and improving hiring outcomes.
4. Building Strong Bench Strength of Supervisors
Fresh talent can only reach its potential when the organisation provides the right environment for development. This makes strong supervisors and managers an essential component of NGIVD’s talent strategy. Young professionals often require coaching, mentoring, feedback and encouragement as they transition from education into professional life. A capable manager can help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical execution.
Strong supervisors can help inexperienced employees:
- Understand expectations
- Learn from mistakes
- Develop professional confidence
- Improve problem-solving skills
- Build customer and communication capabilities
- Take ownership of responsibilities
- Adapt to organisational culture
- Progress towards greater responsibilities
In this context, managers are not merely responsible for monitoring performance. They are also talent developers. Building a strong bench of supervisors and future leaders therefore becomes critical to expanding the talent pool. The more capable managers an organisation develops, the greater its ability to recruit and successfully integrate promising but inexperienced professionals.
Moving Beyond the Traditional Talent Pool
The challenge of talent is not unique to NGIVD. Across industries, organisations are competing for a relatively limited pool of experienced professionals while simultaneously trying to control costs, improve productivity and build capabilities for the future. This creates an opportunity to rethink how talent is defined. Potential should be valued alongside experience. A candidate with limited professional experience but strong learning ability, discipline, curiosity and the right attitude can, with appropriate training and mentorship, potentially outperform a more experienced candidate who lacks adaptability or ownership.
This does not mean that experience is unimportant. Rather, it means that organisations should avoid treating years of experience as the only reliable indicator of future performance. For growing companies, the ability to identify potential, develop capability and build talent internally can become a significant competitive advantage.
Building India’s Future Workforce
Countries that sustain long-term economic growth continuously focus on improving productivity and developing the capabilities of their workforce. This includes strengthening Total Factor Productivity (TFP) by improving skills, processes, technology and the effective utilisation of human capital. India’s large young population represents a significant demographic opportunity. However, demographic advantage can translate into economic advantage only when people have access to meaningful education, employment and opportunities to develop relevant skills.
Businesses have an important role to play in this process. By hiring fresh graduates, creating apprenticeship opportunities, investing in structured training and developing capable managers, organisations can contribute not only to their own growth but also to the broader employability of India’s young workforce.
NGIVD’s Approach to Building a Stronger Talent Pipeline
NGIVD’s evolving approach to talent can be summarised around four principles:
- Hire for potential – Look beyond experience and identify people with the attitude and ability to learn.
- Develop early – Create internships, apprenticeships and structured opportunities for young talent.
- Train systematically – Provide new employees with the knowledge, skills and resources required to perform effectively.
- Build strong leaders – Develop managers who can coach, mentor and enable the next generation of professionals.
Together, these initiatives can help NGIVD move beyond the limitations of a traditional talent pool and create a more sustainable workforce for the future.
Conclusion
The talent challenge cannot be solved simply by competing harder for the same pool of experienced professionals. A more sustainable approach is to widen the talent pool itself. For NGIVD, this means creating opportunities for freshers, building apprenticeship and summer training programs, strengthening employee orientation and investing in capable supervisors and managers. Such an approach may require greater patience and investment in the short term. However, the long-term benefits can be significant: a stronger talent pipeline, greater organisational adaptability, improved employee development and a workforce built around both capability and potential. More importantly, by creating meaningful opportunities for young professionals to enter and grow within the workforce, NGIVD can contribute in its own way to India’s broader demographic opportunity.
The future of talent may not lie in finding more people with experience. It may lie in creating more opportunities for people with potential to become experienced.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Why is NGIVD prioritizing fresh graduates over experienced hires?
Experienced hires narrow the recruitment funnel and don’t always translate into stronger on-the-job performance. NGIVD found that hiring for potential – attitude, adaptability, and willingness to learn – combined with structured training often produces more sustainable results than experience alone.
2. What role do apprenticeships and summer training play in NGIVD’s hiring strategy?
They let NGIVD observe real-world performance – curiosity, ownership, problem-solving – before making a full-time hiring decision, while giving students practical workplace exposure they wouldn’t get from academics alone.
3. Why does orientation and training matter so much in the IVD industry specifically?
Because new hires need context on products, lab workflows, regulatory requirements, and customer dynamics before they can perform effectively – qualifications alone aren’t enough in a specialized healthcare and diagnostics environment.
4. How does NGIVD develop future managers and supervisors?
By treating supervisors as talent developers, not just performance monitors – building bench strength of managers who can coach, mentor, and help early-career hires bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical execution.
5. Does this approach mean NGIVD doesn’t value experienced professionals?
No – the strategy isn’t about excluding experience, but about not treating it as the only reliable predictor of future performance. Potential, adaptability, and training investment are treated as equally important factors.
6. How does NGIVD’s talent strategy connect to India’s broader workforce development?
By hiring freshers, running apprenticeships, and investing in structured training, NGIVD contributes to converting India’s large young population into a genuine economic advantage – turning demographic potential into workforce capability.
