Date:15/04/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/15/stories/2007041507150400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

IT industry facing HR crunch

K. Satyamurty

Government has plans to help industry bridge skills shortage gap

Bangalore: One of the biggest challenges facing the information technology industry and related services is the human resources crunch. Industry bodies such as NASSCOM estimate that the gap is widening for two reasons: the industry continues to grow while only 15 to 20 per cent of graduates from technical institutions are employable.

IT majors such as Infosys Technologies have their own training centres where close to 30,000 persons can be trained each year. For the first time, the Government of Karnataka, a State that accounts for over 30 per cent of IT-related exports from India, has stepped in to bridge this skills shortage gap.

According to the Secretary for Information Technology and Biotechnology, M.N. Vidyashankar, the skills shortage is being felt in all industry verticals that need trained IT personnel. "The major banks alone need 1,50,000 trained hands this year, and the situation is more serious in the export-earning sectors like software development and testing," he said.

Industry observers point out that the IT and IT-related industries possess all the factors necessary to attract talent. The average annual wage increase is 15 per cent and an employee in cities like Bangalore can earn Rs. 5.5 lakh to Rs. 6 lakh a year with three years of experience. According to Abraham Mathew, chief executive officer of CyberMedia Dice, a job portal that recently published the findings of a salary survey, "Those with postgraduate technical qualifications can ask for and get salaries that are 17 to 18 per cent higher than the industry average."

Mr. Vidyashankar says that the State Government is taking a proactive step by identifying the employability gap among technical graduates and trying to rectify it. "We are setting up a sort of `finishing school' for technology graduates in Mysore. The one-year course will make them industry-ready, and response from the industry indicates almost 100 per cent placements."

Training for the first batch of 5,000 trainees will start in May. By 2009, the finishing school may be turning out 35,000 trained personnel annually as faculty and facilities are expanded. "Since faculty has to be drawn from the industry even to give guest lectures and assist with the curriculum, we estimate the training costs will be high. We have approached financial institutions to fund the venture. Many of the trainees could be their own future employees," says Mr. Vidyashankar.

The venture may even have a parallel in Bangalore if discussions now on with certain overseas institutions turn out to be positive.