“Employment (jobs) is up but Employability is down. It’s a ‘myth’ that there are not any jobs, as there is economic growth and jobs are getting better with job creation going on – though we need to ensure that people are ready for these jobs,” according to Sapnesh Lalla, CEO, NIIT Ltd.
According to NIIT, the IT sector is facing uncertainty of demand and would like to move to a ‘Just-in-Time’ hiring model. The sector also needs talent that is specifically skilled on digital technologies so that they can positively contribute to projects from day 1.
The BFSI sector has to deal with a situation in which the work profile is changing dramatically. As per the BCG report titled “Indian Banking 2020: Making the Decade’s Promise Come True,” by 2020, 70% of banking and finance jobs would be in sales and/or relationship management – which requires new skills sets to be hired across the BFSI sector.
“Banks, financial services, insurance and other companies are potential employers as they are constantly bringing in new technology and carrying out lots of training that will keep them compliant with various practices. Foreign markets in USA, Canada too are doing these skills enhancements. So we reskill the students to enter this job market,” he added.
“NIIT’s Talent Pipeline as a Service (TPaaS)’ is a first-of-its -kind initiative that ensures reliable availability of specifically-skilled, ready to deploy ‘Just-in-Time’ talent delivering outcomes from day 1 to global organisations to match the pace of expansion in today’s fast changing, uncertain business environment. NIIT has specifically created bespoke career programs for leading corporates in the IT and BFSI sectors as per their business needs,” Lalla said.
“NIIT did a substantial study on students’ preferred interests and aspirations which included: good lifestyle, social consciousness– for which they were ready to work at but did’nt know how and therefore ended up as ‘drifters’,” he noted while adding that NIIT is offering good career paths and launched numerous programmes and opportunities fitting well in Digital Programming, Accountancy, with focus on Analytics.
NIIT has recently entered into a five-year ‘Learning and Development’ agreement with Pitney Bowes – a global technology company providing commerce solutions that power billions of transactions for global clients that rely on its accuracy and precision in areas of ecommerce fulfillment, shipping and returns; cross-border ecommerce, presort services, office mailing and shipping; location data; and software.
“We are looking at long-term partnerships, besides working with top brands and companies that will employ our students. Our visibility is 15,000 students annually and we are planning to train upto 3 lakh students in the next three years. We are starting to experiment with ITES and have one partner,” he said, adding “We have three models of training but we run tests on students to see which of our partners are best for them. There are multiple models and partners who pay for students training in different ways. We help about 15,000 students (freshers) to get jobs, besides companies doing rescaling themselves or through us.”
