Competency-Based Industry Standards – Need of the hour!! Part 2

This is in continuation to my article published recently on Competency based Industry Standards. 

I presented this subject in World HRD Congress 2017 held in Mumbai in Feb 2017. I would like to invite debate on this. 

People are talking about innovations and change in technology and its landscape. There is a threat looming around losing jobs. There are several reports that companies are laying off people in all cadres – ironically, first time affecting the top rung cadre. I am not sure why no one anticipated this! I also wonder how can India create hundreds of high caliber people suddenly to meet the demand for innovative technologies and how come the people who delivered world class technology solutions till yesterday are becoming rusted!! We are made to believe neither Companies were aware of this nor these techies about this! 

Let us think for a moment that such a situation is unavoidable. If so, how will we face this and how can we utilize the same set of people; training them future ready. No answer. Is only exit the option? 

This makes my argument stronger that the IT Industry needs to have a strong process framework for standardized competency based matrix/score cards for each technical or functional or support role. My expertise area is in talent acquisition and going a bit deeper into the HR area …. I have the following take on this and the attached presentation talks about this. 

Let me also clarify that this is not about commoditizing IT folks but enabling them to meet any eventuality or making them future ready. 

India must have an accredited body, maybe a quasi-government or independent body which collaborates with Industry bodies and comes up with National Skill Bank. There are such bodies in the world like USFDC and W3C. USFDC for example controls one Trillion $ worth of consumer goods and similarly W3C controls international standards for the World Wide Web. If these kinds of bodies can effectively work at the international level, I feel India can also collaborate and make this happen.

National Skill Bank must have standardised Competency benchmark, Skill matrix and JD for each role across Industry, domain, technology and role. All candidates must be advised to take an assessment and declare their competency level for the given technology and role so upskilling, cross skilling, etc becomes very easy. We all are aware that technologies like IBM Watson help medical and legal areas in a big way to automate their processes and reduce human intervention. I feel talent acquisition must move in this direction and also use CRM and AI for profile matches and Bots/GPS for candidate interactions. We must do away with the crazy number of interview rounds … today’s situation is a company’s standard of hiring or technology capability is fixed based on the number of interviews they conduct which in my opinion is an utter waste of time and energy.

Companies must use technology to assess candidates and must close the offer with one level of interview. This means each candidate must have a competency score, individual profiling score and various certifications so the hiring manager can match these with the Competency/Skill score provided by the National Skill Bank and take a call. There is no need for multiple types of fancy resumes and interview rounds; hiring can be so simple!!

You just google “Recruiters are” and see what all results come up….. it is time we change the perception and adopt innovation rather automation!!!