As a part of my New Year
resolution, I am gonna pen down 1 post (min 500 words) every fortnight.
Over the last half of a
decade, I have worked with a lot of youngsters. The number is significantly
high (in tunes of 50,000) and the experience of interacting with them has been
very enriching. I have worked in the learning and development team for a couple
of MNCs and I now can safely say that I have a background in analyzing
behaviors especially from an organization point of view.
When I look at the
competition which exists at the entry level of most of the competitive
companies the first target from the recruitment team is to get the day 1 in the
college when the hiring begins. Reason: Everyone wants the cream. Well, sounds
logical, isn’t it?
Not really. When you
look at numbers in terms of the performance of people over a period of time,
you will be surprised. Now we know that the word ‘performance’ is vague and
includes a lot of factors, for clarity we can simply relate it to the ROI from
the organization point of view. The data suggests that the ROI from every
employee who is hired from a premier institute compared to one who isn’t is not
different. And if you dig a bit deeper in terms of (a) the longevity of the career
of employees, and (b) the positivity he/ she carries around them it hints
towards slightly more commitment from the guys coming from non-premier
institutes.
There are reasons behind
this ROI shift over time. People hired from top tier institutes not only cost
more, they also carry an air of arrogance around them and right from the
beginning of their career. They aren’t flexible working on various tasks; in
and around their primary job.
Over the last decade or
so the way education has made way into the second level of cities of India. A
direct analogy can be seen from the cricket field. Gone are the days when half
of the team used to come from metros like Mumbai which has a rich and deep
cricketing history. Because of the new found exposure; players from relatively
smaller cities are making way into the national scene. Similarly students from
lesser known colleges can be seen to have the hunger to run shoulders with the
best and the humility to carry them professionally at the workplace.
From a Human Resource
point of view and from the view of learning and development, we know that if
the basics like attitude are in place, there are certain types of skills which
can be transferred to an individual. Most of the organizations nowadays have
either incorporated an in house learning and development team or they outsource
it. Whatever they do, they can’t deny the contribution of the training which
has a long term impact on ROI of any organization. Once a firm has invested in
a sound L&D team, it makes sense for them to look for candidates who have
the right mindset as the first priority and skills can be taken care later on.
There are a number of
examples in which organizations have consciously invested in getting people on
board from tier – II and tier III colleges and prepare them through a robust
training and development plan. Researches have shown that the ROI through such
process has been significantly higher in such cases.
Whatever is being written here are the personal views of the author and are subjected to agreement or disagreement. And a request to all members, Please share your views !!
