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Executive Interviews: Interview with Kalpana Jaishankar on Talent Management
March 2007
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Could you brief us on company
profile areas of operations, present
employee strength and turnover?
Patni Computer Systems Limited is a
global IT Services provider servicing
Global 2000 clients. Patni caters to its
clients through its industry-focused
practices, including insurance,
manufacturing, financial services,
telecommunications, and its
technology-focused practices. With an employee strength of over
12,000 and multiple offshore
development facilities across eight
cities;
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Patni has 23 international offices
across the Americas, Europe and Asia-
Pacific. Patni has registered revenues of
US$ 450mn for the year 2005. Patni's service offerings include
application development, application
maintenance and support, packaged
software implementation, infrastructure
management services,
product engineering services, business
process outsourcing and quality
assurance services. Committed to quality, Patni adds
value to its client's businesses
through well-established and
structured methodologies, tools and
techniques. Patni is an ISO 9001:
2000 certified and SEI-CMMi Level 5
organization, assessed enterprise
wide at P-CMM Level 3. In keeping
with its focus on continuous process
improvements, Patni adopts Six
Sigma practices as an integral part of
its quality and process frameworks
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What are your present areas of
recruitment? What is the minimum
qualification that you look for in your
employees?
Over the years we have seen our
requirements becoming more acutely
defined. This has come aboutwith our
focus on verticalization. So, while we do continue to look out
for Java, Dot Net, Client Server and
ERP related skills, for candidates with
more than three years of work
experience, we also look for relevant
domain knowledge For specific service lines such as the
Product Engineering Services or the
Enterprise Application Services, the
need is more distinct. Here we look
for candidates with specialized skills
in embedded technologies, and
packaged application implementation
such as ERP, CRM, SCM, etc. For Freshers, and those with less than
two years ofwork experience,we look
primarily for BEs and BTechs. We also
hire BScs in IT and Computer
Science, as well as MScs in Math,
Physics and Statistics. As far as lateral hiring is concerned,
while the business needs define the
technology skills being sought, we
focus equally on the attitudinal and
personality traits of the individual. -
What, in your opinion, are the key
skill sets that a job seeker should arm
himselfwith to growin the IT sector?
Any particular personality traits?
The need for strong domain
knowledge is becoming increasingly
pronounced. With organizations
moving towards verticalization in
their offerings, understanding of the
domain along with technology
expertise has become an essential. Alongwith these, job seekers also need
to familiarize themselves and
understand the global landscape of the
industry. Communication skills are
also emphasized since they often need
to engage in verbal and/or written
communications with the clients. The Personality traits are defined by our
LEAP framework. LEAP an acronym
for "Leadership Excellence At Patni"
clearly defines the attributes and traits
which we look out for both in
prospective candidates and existing
employees. These include customer
leadership, people leadership,
entrepreneurial leadership, modeling
values, achievement orientation and
strategic vision. -
The Indian IT industry is facing a
resource crunch. What is Patni doing
to combat this shortage?
The demand for IT professionals
today far surpasses the available
supply. Therefore, top-tier players
like Patni are looking at alternate
hiring pools to meet the
requirements. Domain knowledge of the vertical
industries that we operate in is
becoming a key factor in hiring the
right talent.We therefore hire non-IT
professionals at two levels:
- Software Engineers
Here we hire professionals with
two three years of experience in our
vertical industries like financial
services, manufacturing, etc.We have
a program called "Non-IT to IT"
through which we offer evening
training sessions to prospective
candidates. These candidates
continue working in their companies,
and join Patni on the successful
completion of the Non-IT to IT
program. - Solution Architects
We also hire individuals with
extensive experience in our vertical
industries as solution architects.
Professionals from financial services,
banking, insurance, and other vertical
sectors join Patni, and are consultants
on projects.They are not involvedwith
the technical aspect and are purely a
part of the company due to the domain
expertise in the particular sector.
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