Fresher Hire and Train- A Better Option To Lateral Hire To Scale Your Talent Pool?

HIRING AND SCALING IN CHALLENGING TIMES:

Covid -19 pandemic has reset the business, economies, governance and lifestyles irreversibly to the point that technology has become the heart beat of every business, governance and lifestyle experience. The change has brought about seismic shifts – every business has become a technology business- and traditional businesses?????are competing to hire technology professionals to maintain their competitive advantage?and technology companies are beginning to offer?????services like money transfer, hitherto provided by banks- leaving very little demarcation between technology companies??????and conventional businesses. The competition for talent, especially for the technology?????workforce with options?????for work from anywhere, has led to an increase?????in remunerations by as?much as 300%, in some cases for lateral hiring. With over 93% employers planning hiring for 2022 in India and over 50% employees looking for change, scaling?????up through lateral hiring comes with many pitfalls and cannot be sustained.

?CHALLENGES OF LATERAL HIRING:

Uncertainty: Most??lateral hiring has a 60????-90 days?notice period for joining, after an offer has been accepted. With high demand for IT workforce, most candidates shop around for better offers and very often do not join after accepting an offer, creating uncertainties. This has led to constant fire fighting for the HR team as well the projects expecting induction of the new team member.

High Cost: Many a time, lateral movement of talent is driven by the monetary rewards and not passion or commitment. This has led to a bidding war for talent between companies – which has made it a very expensive option especially for midsize companies trying to attract lateral talent, as employees are demanding from 50%- 300 % increase in remuneration for lateral hires.

?Paying for Experience that does not count:?Experienced employees price themselves for their experience. Annual additional cost per year of experience can be an average of USD 3000/-. But it is seen that only part of that?????experience- sometimes as low as 25% -is relevant to the current role to which they are being hired. This leads to a cost that has no benefit to the organization- which as to be borne by the employer for the full term of employment. For example 1 year of irrelevant experience for an employee staying for 10 years can cost the organization USD 30,000/-

Impediment to building organizational culture: Every organization has a unique DNA and associated culture. Large number of lateral hires can unsettle your organization culture and?unique DNA to the point that it would become??????????another place of work than a place of belonging, learning and growth, unless care is taken to preserve unique organisational culture.

Resistance to Learn and Unlearn: Lateral hires are more reluctant to pick up new technologies and also vary of changing the way they are used to doing and therefore less flexible to adapt?????to new technologies,?tools and processes?????as they are mostly set in their?????ways.

BENEFITS OF FRESHER HIRING:

?Every talented professional?started as a fresher. With right guidance during the initial phase they can turn out to be great asset for the organization. Hiring freshers?????is one of the best ways to revamp the work environment without shelling out a significant amount from the budget.

Certainty and Cost: Campus or Off- Campus fresher hiring has a joining?????ratio of 50%+. Based on this statistics we can safely plan the number of offers and can schedule a single joining date of a batch of candidates as against personalized joining for laterals which reduces burden on the HR team. Also after factoring a training period of 3- 6 months we can safely assume that candidates can be billable on the project. Since these candidates tend to stay for an average of 3+ years, even after apportioning the training cost and initial period?6 months, the cost per employee?????is significantly lower than a lateral hire who is paid even for the experience which may not be relevant to the?????current role.

Open to Learning?????and Unlearning:?Freshers?????come?????with excitement of starting their career, leaving a mark and therefore?generally open?to learning new technologies and processes????. They are already in learning mode right from college?????and therefore able to pick?????up new ideas, technologies and processes?????and try them out. With right guidance and mentoring they are open, re-examining?????their assumptions and embracing change.?Freshers?????come?????with new ideas and approaches to solving problems and are eager to prove themselves and can?????become long term assets for the organisation.

Technology Natives:?Freshers are a generationZ that has been exposed to technologies virtually from toddler years. Experimenting with technology comes naturally to them.?They are better equipped to adapt the technology to the needs of the times and are able to come?????up with new?????use cases and solutions. They are a connected generation, used to learning from global peers, influencers?and looking to shape the future of the technology?????landscape.

Bulk Hiring and Quick Scaling: Unlike experienced candidates, it is easier to mobilize a large number of enthusiastic graduates -even in thousands, which helps to batch annual hiring, for planning,?execution and training the candidates. This model helps faster scaling even in times when talent is scarce. Large companies like TCS and Infosys have mostly grown though adding about 20% of their employee strength as freshers every year to sustain their growth and cost advantage year after year.

Commitment and Flexibility: Younger candidates who are looking for an opportunity to prove themselves ,stay?????for at least??????3 years on an average after joining the job. They are willing to spend?????longer hours or work on?shifts like US timing adding to the flexibility in deploying talent reliability in investing in their training and growth.

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“FAITH INFOTECH ACADEMY FRESHER TRAINING:

Faith InfoTech Team has over 2 decade’s experience in training and deploying 1000s of?freshers for?over 100+ IT Companies. Faith InfoTech has worked with some of the best known companies in Technopark, including the largest employer as well as fastest growing company in Kerala with 100% YoY growth. Faith InfoTech has played a vital?????role in scaling the many mid size companies from mere 100+ technical staff to over 1000+ in less than 5 years.?Large number companies -from SMEs to large companies- access the talent pool from the ready for the job trained candidates through?PROPEL- A full-stack developer public?program,?offered at the academy over the last 10 years.

With a unique and holistic pedagogy and organisational values of training as mission, and a team of professionals with decades of experience in Training and Development in some of the best known companies, and close understanding of customer pain points, Faith InfoTech is best placed to partner your company, to design and deliver a training plan that fulfills organisational needs and challenges of project.

Faith Infotech learning services team?will?work closely with your team, to identify the learning objectives,?governance of the training, define learning outcomes and assessment/ feedback measures ensure quality of training and performance of the candidates after deployment on the project. Faith InfoTech Academy is an accelerator for multiple product start-ups. Professional support in technology stack from the start-ups ecosystem for the trainees??makes?Faith unlike any other learning service provider. During the Covid 19 pandemic, Faith InfoTech has adopted online training effectively with appropriate collaboration tools for a variety of customers which makes it an ideal partner ?for Online and Offline training initiatives.

TRAINING MODE:

Training would be facilitated on instructor-led?????online mode with appropriate collaboration and evaluation/ assessment tools or on fully classroom?????mode with in person instructor-led?????training or on a hybrid based on location and?ground situation. Option for recording the training for participants to use?????for reference can be made available.

TRAINING?DESIGN BASED ON CYBERNETICS :

The programme aims to enable the participants to develop the foundational knowledge and skills?required to excel as IT professionals in the medium term, while addressing the immediate requirement of industry immersion and project readiness for the participants, with respect to the specific teams/ project they have been assigned as full stack developers on Java/ .NET/ Python/ NodeJS etc.?Candidates are expected to develop hands-on skills?????in Database Design, SQL, Programming, UI Design, Web Technology, ORM &?Web Services. In addition to technology areas, Software Engineering, Project Planning and Quality Concepts, the programme will?incorporate team activities with appropriate collaboration and project monitoring tools for working effectively as team members (and future team leaders), interacting with internal and external stakeholders????, which will make a qualitative difference in their approach to understanding, solving and meeting stakeholder expectations. Soft skills like communication management, team skills and professionalism are to be integrated into the training design.

The approach would be one that helps the participants to take charge of their own self development through exploration, experimentation and shared learning.?A project is planned during the course of the training, in the respective technology stack-Java/ .NET?with Angular with appropriate SQL and No SQL Database.

Training is planned?on a?highly participative mode, structured in the??line of SDLC, with appropriate contextual knowledge sharing, technology component and hands on at each stage of the life cycle followed by discussion and feedback on a daily basis. For example at the database design stage, the concept of normalisation would be revisited and the participants would be made to apply those concepts in the database design. After UI Design Stage, the participants would be guided through a workshop?on HTML, CSS, Bootstrap etc to enable them to implement the UI design in the software.

?A pre evaluation through discussion and assessment?of work already done is planned on the first day. At the end of every sprint, comprehensive evaluation and feedback would be provided in teams and in person by the training?????team, to each of the candidates.?Similarly a?comprehensive?evaluation is planned at the end of the program, in addition to evaluation/ feedback at the end of every sprint. Candidates would be given a problem statement for which they have to identify use cases,??arrive at the?UI design, Data Model design, Test Case design?and prepare the required documents.?The candidates would also implement the solution with given?technology components?in the short duration so as to challenge them to deliver quality work within the prescribed time.?This would be followed by presentation, Viva and??Online Test to arrive at a comprehensive evaluation of the candidates.

EVALUATION AND FEEDBACK?FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE:???????

Evaluation, feedback and corrective action are important?????tools for ensuring the best outcome from the training. The Performance Evaluation System is designed on the model of a ‘feedback control system’ where performance is tracked on an ongoing basis and appropriate corrective actions are taken immediately. Daily MCQ and Presentation are used as feedback for candidates, and not grading. Whereas at the end of every camp practical and?conceptual evaluations are done?????using MCQ, VIVA, Machine Test,?Project?and Code review to arrive at holistic assessment of progress of the trainee. Out of a total of 100 credits, 80 credits are allocated for performance in the various Camps.?The importance allotted to practical work / projects increases over the different camps.?10 credits are allocated for final evaluation, and another 10 credits are based on evaluation by peers and others who interact with the participants over the different camps.

Detailed criteria for evaluation of Projects, Class work and Assignments are worked out, taking into consideration dimensions of Process Quality and Product Quality. Knowledge would be assessed by online tests and direct interactions with the participants.The programming skills would also?be evaluated through review of code, completion of projects and viva-voce.The software development process would have equal importance as the technical project. Periodic MCQ through our online platform, multi modal sprint evaluation, including feedback from teams and final evaluation ensures optimal outcome for the training.

?In addition, feedback?????would be taken from the candidates by Faith Infotech as well as independently?????by client company from the candidates on a weekly?????basis to assess the satisfaction of the candidates during the training. A governance mechanism can be put in place where the Faith?????Infotech learning?team can meet an assigned???????????????point of contact from employer/client company to report daily/ weekly progress, feedback from candidates/ trainers and?performance reports.

?An independent evaluation from the project midway through the training and at the end of the training on defined parameters and expectation can also be planned as a measure of quality assurance.

When you need support for scaling your IT Talent pool with Hiring and Training Fresh Talent, feel free to reach out:

Saji Joseph, Director & CEO- Faith InfoTech Academy, Thejaswini, Technopark- 695581,

Email: [email protected]

www.faithinfotechacademy.com

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