Talent Mapping in India – How deep is the Talent Pool and best practices to deep dive?

A McKinsey study reports that India’s pool of young graduates (those with seven years or less of work experience) is estimated at 14 million.This number is topped up by 2.5 million that gets added every year.This is the largest talent pool in this age group amongst 28 countries studied by McKinsey Global Institute.

The study also brought out the downside of low employability of this huge talent pool.As per the report about 25% of the total engineering talent pool is employable in India.But inspite of this short supply of available talent pool, India continues to be a destination for knowledge work for global companies.But there are pressures being felt on the same talent pool as demand overshoots supply.

It is not only an “Unemployment” story in emerging markets like India but one of “Employability”.

I see the untapped potential of India’s talent pool getting mapped and developed through a combined effect of 2 key forces - “Network” and “Social Entrepreneurship”.

There are two mission driven companies that are working towards bridging this employability gap – Merit Trac www.merittrac.com which is into talent mapping and skills assessments and Silicon India www.siliconindia.com that provides the platform to connect,coach and build talent assets through an online approach.

Talent networks in my opinion will become the next generation platforms for progress.

A talent network provides a technology platform that allows companies and individuals to communicate with each other and get engaged in a more trusted environment.Just as ATM’s and credit cards have become a platform that allows cash to be dispensed to bank customers from locations distant from traditional banks or paying without cash , Talent Networks will work as the next ATM’s for encashing talent.

I am excited about Merit Trac and Silicon India being a part of the SSPA study on Talent Management in Emerging Markets.Madan Padaki ,Founder Director for Meritrac is authoring the best practice on Talent Mapping.

Talking about the second force that could bring change is “Social Entrepreneurship”.To help explain this I would like to share a perspective I got after I read a book – “The Next Global Stage” by Kenichi Ohmae (Wharton School Publishing)

Kenichi refers in his book (page 156) – “A number of aid projects in the Pondicherry area in South India are providing literacy education”… to the downtrodden sections of society.”It is not tradional words and numbers literacy.It is computers literacy.” These young boys and girls are being prepared for becoming the employees of tomorrow.

Knowing where talent resides and caching them in a network and to keep them engaged is the most trusted and reliable form of attracting and hiring talent.But most corporates are still in the number crunching stage where urgent need for replacements and incremental hires is not able to take the Hiring Engine from the “transactional” gear to the next level of mapping and developing people to be hired not today but for tomorrow.

- Dheeraj Prasad