SIs face dearth of quality manpower

Getting quality technical professionals is fast becoming an ordeal for many

solution providers. And this is something they are learn-ing the hard way. A

prominent SI in southern India could manage to find only three out of 10 support

engineers that he was supposed to provide on his clientsite, as part of the

deliverables.

In fact, all his efforts to get well experienced and qualified technical

personnel by means of advertisement, recruitment agency and word-of-mouth

publicity failed. Result: The SI lost the order! And this is not a one-off

incident. The entire breed of mid-sized solution providing organizations is

fac-ing this dilemma. That of find-ing well-experienced and capa-ble technical

manpower and then retaining it too.

"The ground realities are too grim. The fact is that there is not enough

trained manpower available in the market. While our business grows, this

conti-nues to be the biggest deter-rent to the growth," remarked Cherian

Thomas, Marketing Director, Wysetek Systems Technologists.

So does this mean that the industry is suddenly witnessing a drought of

quality manpower, that too in a country which boa-sts of a huge number of degree

and diploma holders? "No, getting a fresh degree/diploma holder is not a

problem. But finding a Microsoft or Cisco-certified engineer with three or four

years experience and can do justice to complex technical requirements at the

client-site, is increasingly becoming difficult," answered G Balakrish-nan,

Director, Ontrack.

Another significant reason behind this gap in supply and demand of quality

manpower is the high expectations from the client’s end but unwilling-ness to

pay for the same.

Another anathema that haunts these SIs is that even if they put in resources

to groom a fresher and technically equip him, nine out of ten chances are that

he would jump at a better offer very soon. "It really is a grim situation

for our solution partners," agreed Jyoti Satya-nathan, Country Manager-

xSeries and Intellisations, IBM India.

"It’s not that talent is not available, but we don’t see many

students coming forth for such courses. Many are still wary of incidences where

peo-ple have burned their hand with numerous training institutes giving job

assurances," said Nikhil Murarka, Director, Solution World. While Murarka

maintains that his institute enrolls 25-30 students every month all of whom are

placed, he feels the faulty education system is also to be blamed.

Further, given the fact that even call centers are currently offering monthly

salaries above Rs 10,000, SIs now really have to scale up their solutions

business to be able to attract the best-of-breed talent.

Goldie


Mumbai (CyberMedia News Service)