Tech Companies Are Becoming Talent Incubators To Address Attrition And Reskilling Challenges

Winning the war for talent is the latest strategic imperative for tech companies who are fighting the twin battle of strengthening data science capabilities and onboarding the right talent. Few enterprises besides the digital natives such as Google, Uber, Amazon and Netflix are able to hire the best data science and machine learning talent. Now, thanks to improved tools and training material available publicly, mid-size companies have also intensified their hiring process and turned enterprises into talent incubators. In the words of Andrew Ng, for AI to reach its full potential, it needs to work not only in great internet companies like Google and Baidu but also in other industries.

Given how many companies lack the financial muscle for recruiting the best-in-class analytics and ML talent, they turn inward to beef up their bench strength by developing training programs to bring the workforce up-to-speed with the latest tools and techniques from data science. Earlier this year, NASSCOM, in association with third-party learning and development providers launched the Future Skills platform in a bid to train 40 lakh IT professionals in eight new skill sets, including AI, ML and big data. Launched as a B2B mode, the platform would enable companies to reskill their 20 lakh employees. At a later stage, it will be a B2C model to engineering colleges to train the fresh talent in emerging technologies, NASSCOM senior management shared reportedly.

Here’s A Look At How Tech Companies, Big And Small Are Turning Into Talent Incubators:

1) Paysafe Hosted A Hackathon As A Recruitment Drive: Recruitment drives are turning into hackathons where winners walk away with cash prizes. Hyderabad-based fintech company Paysafe hosted a hackathon, called CrackTheCode, earlier this March. It was organised as a recruitment drive for its Hyderabad operations and saw participation from developers and software engineers who developed fintech solutions in emerging technologies like machine learning, analytics and AI. The winners also walked away with cash prizes in the competition.

2) TCS Made News With Their Reskilling Program: Last year, TCS grabbed headlines for reskilling two lakh employees as part of their in-house development programme. Interestingly, the company’s first initiative was in 2014, when it undertook the mission of training one lakh employees in emerging technologies like ML, AI and DevOps. The platform Fresco Play allows employees at all levels to learn on the go via training modules available on mobile and web.

3) Axis Bank’s Thought Factory Innovation Lab Has An Incubator Program, Housing Exceptional Talent: Axis Bank’s Thought Factory has an internal incubator programme that comprises a highly tech-oriented internal team, which works on “building new kind of capabilities and digital solutions for the bank”. When AIM last spoke to Markandey Upadhyay, co-founder at ‎Thought Factory, Axis Innovation Lab he was backed by a team of 12-15 people of “exceptional talent and expertise” who work on building new kinds of capabilities. The incubator program was launched to gain a first-mover advantage in the tech space and connect with in-house talent and outside players to bring out focused tech solutions.

Why Should Tech Companies Build And Foster In-House Talent?

One of the top challenges of C-suite is retaining top talent and one of the biggest reasons for employee attrition is the lack of reskilling and learning opportunities. All this can change if organisations provide the right platform to employees to reboot their skills and stay relevant.
Senior executives from marketing, product and engineering backgrounds jump on the opportunity to understand more about emerging technologies in their field.
Enterprises should also promote the culture of in-house mentorship and coaching which can help in building talent and also improve manager-employee relationship, a crucial factor for job satisfaction.
By developing an internal data science education program, organisations in partnership with learning and development providers can gear the programs towards specific business problems