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Hewitt Quarterly
Asia Pacific
is made possible through the combined skills and experience
of Hewitt consultants from across the Asia-Pacific region.
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For further information please
contact:
Hewitt Associates
2601-05 Shell Tower
Times Square
Causeway Bay
Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2877-8600
Fax: (852) 2877-2701
editor-hqap@hewitt.com
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NASSCOM's Assessment of Competence: A National Assessment and Certification Program for the Indian ITES-BPO Industry
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India has undergone vast political, social and economic developments in recent years, accelerated by the strong forces of
globalization and information technology (IT).
At the heart of this growth lie two core sectors: Information Technology
Enabled Services (ITES) and the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, both of which continue to grow from strength to
strength. In 2005-6, the Indian ITES-BPO sector recorded export revenues of US$6.3 billion, representing a 37 percent growth
on the previous year, and created an additional 90,000 jobs, bringing the total number of people employed within the industry
to 409,000.
India's key strength lies with its talent pool, which produces approximately four million non-technical graduates and 400,000
engineering graduates every year. However, according to the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005, at present only about 25 percent of
technical graduates and 10-15 percent of general college graduates are suitable for employment in the offshore IT and BPO
industries. |
As more and more companies look to offshore markets as part of their global workforce sourcing strategy, it is essential that
India not only improves the quality and skills of its workforce in order to retain its competitive edge as a leading IT and
BPO destination, but also starts to access new talent pools in more remote areas.
In order to address this challenge, Hewitt Associates and India's National Association of Software and Service Companies
(NASSCOM), the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT software and services industry in India, joined
forces to create the NASSCOM'S Assessment of Competence for the Indian ITES-BPO industry (NAC). The NAC will address the
looming talent shortage by creating a robust and continuous pipeline of talent through a standard assessment and
certification process. The NAC will not only provide insights into real training and development needs, but also help
companies, governments and universities develop customized development programs and provide greater access to training
throughout the country.
Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM, says, "The Indian ITES-BPO industry is growing at a very fast pace, and the biggest
challenge we face is getting quality people, on time, all the time. The NAC certification program will support the industry
and end-customers by providing them with employment standards and benchmarks. The initiative will also provide BPO firms
greater visibility among talent outside of their current catchments, especially in the smaller towns, thereby increasing the
overall supply."
NASSCOM's Assessment of Competence
The NAC will test the general aptitude of candidates on a range of skill sets including English communication and selected
cognitive skills. The scores obtained will help organizations gauge the suitability of potential candidates and determine
training needs for existing employees. It's expected that the program will be adopted as a trusted recruitment standard
across the country, reassuring Indian ITES-BPO companies that candidates who have passed the NAC are qualified to work in the
industry without the need for further individual assessment.
Anupam Prakash, head of Hewitt's Global Sourcing and Business Transformation practice in Asia, explains, "The NAC will help
organizations tap new talent pools in comparatively remote parts of the country, through a common assessment accessible
easily to all. Additionally, the Assessment and Certification framework will be deployed to ensure a steady supply of quality
ITES-BPO professionals to meet the present and future requirements of the industry."
What the NAC means for India
The NAC will raise the bar on India's ITES-BPO industry, providing a national standard for entry level ITES-BPO employees and
making it easier for organizations to benchmark the performance of their staff against other organizations. And because it
will create industry visibility, allowing companies to recruit from a much larger talent pool while easily filtering out
unqualified candidates, it will improve efficiency and reduce recruitment costs substantially.
The NAC will also provide numerous benefits for job seekers in the ITES-BPO industry. Most notably, the certificate will
create a common, transparent qualification across the ITES-BPO sector, and allow candidates to identify their strengths and
assess their training needs. Prakash continues, "The NAC will be of particular benefit to people living outside the major BPO
centers who might not normally have made the move for fear of being unemployed. They will now be free to pursue a career,
safe in the knowledge that they have already earned their national certificate of competency under NASSCOM."
Additionally, the NAC will provide both the State and Central Governments with valuable insights into the strengths and areas
for improvement from a particular state or region,which will help them design focused and customized talent development
programs for these areas.
Developing the NAC
To build the NAC framework, Hewitt conducted in-depth interviews with close to 50 leading ITES-BPO companies in order to
better understand their current recruitment practices, required skill sets and retention challenges. The results were then
converted into a job-skill matrix, which formed the basis for the design of the assessment program.
Core and working committees were formed from within the industry to ensure the program featured those key assessment
requirements identified in the job-skill matrix. An expert evaluation committee was also established in order to overview
vendor technical standards and pilot outcomes.
Prakash continues, "The NAC pilot testing phase among ITES-BPO companies went incredibly well. From August 2005, we ran the
program in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai over three months. We successfully tested approximately 6,000 candidates from 36 key
IT and BPO companies."
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The Future of the NAC in India
Following the success of the pilot, the NAC team decided to launch a state initiative to ensure there is a large enough
ready-to-employ talent pool available for the industry by the time NAC is launched nationally. The state initiative, as a
pre-cursor to the national rollout, began in the state of Rajasthan on November 18, 2006 and close to 2,500 individuals
signed up to participate.
Statewide rollout is soon to follow in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, and Kerala, and an estimated 15,000
graduates are expected to take the exam through this process.
It is estimated that the Indian ITES-BPO sector could generate as much as US$18 billion and employ approximately a million
people by 2009. With this is mind, Karnik smiles, "We are hopeful that this initiative will be a major means of bridging the
short distance that, today, stands between Indian graduates and the industry's requirements, through the world-class testing,
certification and skill-set identifying methodologies being used for the NAC."
By Anupam Prakash
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