I would never have realized this couple of years ago while in college, but finding people with the right skills is actually an extremely gruesome task companies are facing today. While this is more a trend I see in small and medium businesses, it also holds true for many large businesses as well.
I was at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network networking dinner early this month and a couple of entrepreneurs brought this up, as part of the discussions to share best practices and pain points that all women entrepreneurs in the room could learn from. Neetu Bhatia, Co-Founder and CEO at Kyazoonga.com, India's first and largest entertainment and sports ticketing company, mentioned that “I just find it so hard to find people with the right talent” to which another woman CEO, founder of 99labels.com, Ishita Swarup, amplified the conversation by saying that while she gets enough CV’s, she hardly gets any with the right skills!
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| Pictures from the Dell Womens Entrepreneur Network networking dinner held in Delhi on May 3rd , 2011 |
Then a little later this month I also attended Startup Saturday Delhi, where the founder of iimjobs.com mentioned, in the passing, that immediately after graduating from IIM he had no particular skills so he initially went with the obvious and picked the job that paid the highest.
This got me thinking. A country which is touted to have the smartest brains, where MBA’s are mushrooming by the minute and where the percentage of educated unemployed is rising, we are still a country which isn’t focusing on developing the skill sets of our future workforce! It’s quite a shame actually.
But then the marketer in me always likes to look at circumstances like these as opportunities and hence I see this as an opportunity that management institutes can capitalize on. [Like the way few already are in some way] If done well, this is actually a great product for them to market about their college. But how can they do this?
There aren’t any hard and fast rules on this, but a few ideas immediately on my mind are:
- Create an entrepreneurship board/ innovation lab with industry veterans who could shape a student’s thought process
- Assign mentors to existing batch students. Mentors could be alumni, senior batch members, professors or other industry professionals, for the entire tenure of their course. These mentors could guide students on what to read, where to look for information, which events to attend, where and with whom to network, highlight industry trends etc. according to where their interest lies
- They could set up a regular practice of having industry professionals from different industries come and speak with the students on similar things mentioned above
Basically the idea is to assign them someone/ something who/ that could further enhance the area of knowledge where they are passionate about. It I’ve come to realize this, all students do have something that interests them whether its photography or making presentations or cooking or engineering or rock climbing or travel etc. The aim will be that 2years down the line these students will have the aura to impress people from their industry and outside which is more likely to get them jobs, rather than touting the college gives 100% placement in itself!
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