The Race For Offshore Talent

Some time back offshore majors found that financial services company attract talent with better salaries and higher glamour quotient, much to its chagrin. The war for talent is intensifying in the indian markets.Businessweek writes about the war for talent in india. The article assesses the approach of western majors and indian headquartered majors in attracting talent.

When I heard IBM's presentation at a job fair, they talked a lot about their brand and innovation but not much about training," says Sanjay Joshi, 22, a graduate of MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore. "That's why being at Infosys is the Indian middle-class dream."
Satisfying high career expectations can be tough. Just a few years ago, IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard , and Coca-Cola ) could lure all the top Indian grads they needed on the strength of their names. "Now multinationals are losing talent because they made false promises about careers," says Soumen Basu, who heads Manpower's India office..

While currency commotion is hurting offshore majors, going by Businessweek, their inherenet strength in attracting and retaining talent seems to be helping the offshore majors. Three of the top five offshore headquartered players find a place in the S&P Promising Growth Portfolio. I have written in the past that the Indian headquartered companies have been extremely innovative and ruthlessly efficient in scaling up their operations. Building showpiece campuses the size of many U.S. colleges is just one way big Indian employers are battling to hold on to budding engineers, designers, and finance specialists. Not long ago, India's skilled labor supply seemed limitless. Today, companies face high turnover, escalating salaries, and shortages of qualified workers and managers. Less than a quarter of companies surveyed in 2006 in India by McKinsey & Co. said they were meeting recruiting needs. By 2010, McKinsey predicts, India will face a shortfall of 500,000 staff capable of doing work for multinationals.
Gautam Ghosh does not seem to agree with the conclusions drawn by Businessweek.
As I wrote earlier, after all winning the people war is a crucial determinant of success for any organization. In most of the knowledge business, the future value of enterprises are centered on building seemingly intangible assets vs the conventional measures of capital assets. Thats where good, capable people, well aligned team, well conceived strategy and top quality leadership matters.

Labels: Emerging Trends, Offshore Talent