Vishaal Shah
Times Ascent Online

"Product Development is still a very niche area as far as the IT space in India is concerned" - Shoba Chetty, Director HR, Impetus Technologies

1. Can you describe the current employment trends in your industry?
Product Development is still a very niche area as far as the IT space in India is concerned. We believe that the IT Professionals who have experience in core development switch over to product development for the sake of creativity and innovation. Product management, architecture, testing, implementation, support are the various emerging areas of the software product development industry. There is also a big shift towards high end product, architecture R & D.

Regarding employment trends, product outsourcing is still nascent in India and expected to grow exponentially as more and more companies change their focus from vanilla services to product engineering. Recruiting the best talent to gain the requisite product development advantage is still a challenge for most such companies.

2. What are some of the challenges HR professionals face in this industry?
The challenges we face are more or less similar to the other players in IT Industry albeit the magnitude might be different - paucity of experienced personnel; attrition in the IT Industry and managing our exponential growth while constantly balancing organizational efficiencies that creep in due to fast paced growth and all the time maintaining high productivity. We also have to ensure that our employees remain motivated and constantly charged to perform at their optimum level. HR has to facilitate the evolution of a high performance culture within the organization.

3. How do you deal with attrition?
According to the ABB survey, the movement of workforce across national boundaries accounts for 72 per cent of employee turnover, whereas 61 per cent of the workforce in the IT industry is changing jobs because of higher packages.

4. How far do you feel is training important in an organization?
Training is a very critical HR function in any organization. At Impetus, we have a training cell called ‘Prayas’. Prayas takes care of the training needs of all the employees’ at various levels. For example, the new recruit goes trough a rigorous induction process where all the facets of the organization like the work, people, organizational culture, etc. are explained to him/her.
 
Our employees have also formed a group called Architecture Incubation Group. This is an informal consortium where we discuss best practices in software product architecture, share views on emerging patterns, and discuss the ever challenging enterprise architecture domain.

5. What are some of the traits and qualifications you look for in the people you hire?
Our employees are our biggest asset and we take pride in their proficiency, skills, and achievements.

We look for people who are inspired and passionate about their work and willing to take the initiative, and work towards achieving organizational goals by team effort. Our interesting technology initiatives stimulate their grey cells, ensuring that they meet all work challenges with sophistication and panache.

We hire candidates with prior and relevant experience based on open positions at any given point of time. We hold recruitment drives in various Tier I and Tier II cities in India to choose the best among software professionals. We also recruit directly from prestigious educational campuses. Employees in our non-engineering functions typically hold an MBA degree and are experts in their chosen fields.
 
6. Where do you see the IT industry five years from now?
As per a Nasscom review, the Exports from the IT-BPO Industry will clock a growth of 32.6 per cent vis-vis last year and will go beyond $31 billion this fiscal. The export target in the year 2010 is $60 billion and around $86 billion by year 2012 (according to Nasscom-McKinsey report). India is also likely to hold a dominant share of the global offshore IT-ITES sector with 65 per cent of the global market in offshore IT and 46 per cent of the ITES market.

To achieve this targeted growth, due importance must be given to reduce attrition and developing employable, ready and skilled professionals for the industry and consistently growing the talent pool.

Education should be made the new area of focus. The transition from locating talent and retaining talent will move to creating talent. HR professionals have to identify and constantly review the requirement of skill-sets for employees and work.

7. If you had to design a training module for the HR department, what would you concentrate on?
Once viewed as a transaction processor, today’s HRM professional faces a myriad of new expectations and challenges in shaping the organization’s human resources function.

The Training module for the HR dept should concentrate on:

i) Knowledge of the business. Human resources professionals must understand how their business or agency operates. Expertise in these areas helps human resources professionals create value by enabling them to link their actions more effectively to the organization’s strategy.

ii) Knowledge of ‘Best Practices’ in HR (HR Delivery). Human resources professionals must continue to develop expertise in their field, knowing the best practices and “state of the art” in staffing, development, reward systems, performance management, and related HR functions.

iii) Change Management Skills. Change management requires skills in problem solving, innovation, process improvement, influence, consultation, communication, and leadership. This is a relatively new requirement for human resources and one which demands increased attention.

iv) Personal Credibility. Finally, HR professionals need to demonstrate behaviors that convey competence, integrity, accountability, confidentiality, and related ethical qualities to earn the trust and respect of line managers and employees.