Dataquest, India: Cognizant’s Vice President, Human Resources, Shares His Insights on the ICT Skills Needed Today
“In India, too much emphasis has been given to engineering streams, today’s business problems need more than just engineers,” says Satish Jeyaraman. Excerpts:
“If you look at the ICT skills landscape, what according to you are the 2 challenges the industry is facing now?
The first big challenge is this: In this age of near constant technology adoption and disruption, we do not have enough technology talent globally. Secondly, in India, too much emphasis has been given to engineering streams; today’s business problems need more than just engineers. We are also grappling with a real dearth of humanities talent - commerce, languages, arts and sciences, data scientists, behaviour analysts, psychologists and so on.
The Digital Disruption coupled with automation has completely changed the nature of tech skills required for today’s ICT jobs - as an organisation how are you coping with sourcing the right skills?
Today, companies expect niche skills and proficiency in digital technologies from students. They should be able to go beyond just acquiring theoretical knowledge and have the know-how on practical application of the theory. A keen understanding of new technologies would be important. Companies would also want candidates who are job-ready and who do not need much training time before they are deployed in projects. Mass recruitment will be replaced by niche-skill recruitment.
On the HR Priorities for the current year
Our HR mandate focuses on two objectives: skilling and creating a wholesome employee experience. The second important HR objective is to ensure that as an organization, we create the very best employee experience for the organization.”
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