Infosys Campus Connect - A Solution to Talent Crunch Challenge?

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"The Campus connect program developed by Infosys focuses on developing the competitive levels of the students. We aim to achieve this by training the faculty and also by organizing webinars and seminars for the students." ¹

- Srikantan Moorthy, Senior Vice - President and Group Head, Education and Research, Infosys, 2010.

"There is a need for the Industry to take active interest in the educational institutions where their potential employees are groomed and be involved" ²

- H.S Ballal, Pro Chancellor, Manipal University,³ 2010.

The early 21st century saw India emerging as a global leader in the Information Technology (IT) sector. The growth rate of the IT industry in India from 1992-2001 was 50%4 - almost double that of the US. Moreover all businesses across the world as well as in India were completely dependent on IT applications for their operations. So, there were numerous employment opportunities in IT services in India. Since the IT industry was 'people-centric', the demand for quality manpower was high.5 For the IT companies to remain ahead of the competition in the global market place, manpower with product and research-based project knowledge was quite essential.6

So, educational institutions and the IT industry realized the need for increasing the number of industry-ready graduates to meet the growing demands of the IT industry.⁷ IT companies started to bank on engineering colleges for new employees, as they churned out several thousand graduates every year. But the IT majors noticed that the graduates from engineering colleges had several skill gaps while serving their customers and that the companies had to spend a lot of money on training them.⁸ For instance, Infosys on an average spent about US$ 170 million and six months to one year of time training newly joined graduates in 2007.⁹

NASSCOM¹⁰ reported that only 25% of engineering college graduates could be employed immediately in the IT industry.¹¹ due to which organizations were not able to find skilled and immediately employable engineering graduates.¹² In 2002-2003, out of 129,000 IT engineering graduates, only 32,250 were capable of competing with the global workforce.¹³ During 2003-04, the total numbers of IT students was 141,000; of them 80,000 were employed and in 2004-2005, the total number of IT graduates was 165,000. Of them, 94,000 were employed in various IT related jobs.¹⁴

Infosys, the second largest software services company¹⁵ in India in 2011,¹⁶ understood that academic institutions required active co-operation and support from the IT industry to meet the manpower demand.¹⁷ This prompted Infosys to launch a program called 'Campus Connect' in 2004. The aim of this program was to increase the rate of employability of engineering graduates in the IT industry. Infosys Campus Connect was an Industry-Academia interaction program intended to enhance the skills of engineering graduates and to create a pool of talented industry-ready engineering graduates in colleges itself. Many analysts opined that with the help of Infosys Campus Connect, relations between the IT industry and the colleges could be enhanced so that the requirements of the IT industry and academia could be met.

Reasons for Talent Crisis - Next Pages >>

1] Chitradeepa A Lavanyam, "Creating a Job-Ready Workforce," www.thehindu.com, January 18, 2011.
2] "Employment Yin Yang," http://issuu.com/eduindia, October 12, 2010.
3] Manipal University was established in 1993. The founder of the university was Dr Tonse Madhava Anantha Pai. Manipal University offered many courses relating to Management studies, Life sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Engineering, Humanities, and Pharmacy among others. Under affiliation from Manipal University there were 20 institutions offering about 270 courses.
4] "Growth Of India's IT Industry," www.economywatch.com, April 30, 2010.
5] "Infosys Campus Connect," www.nsec.ac.in
6] "National Employability Study IT/ITeS Sector," www.aspiringminds.in, 2010.
7] "Campus Connect - Fast Facts 2010-11," www.techtamilnadu.com
8] "Campus Connect Program Overview," www.ipec.org.in, March, 2007.
9] "Infosys to Tie up with Other IT Cos to Train Graduates," www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com, August 13, 2008.
10] NASSCOM stands for National Association for Software and Services Companies. It is a global trade body with over 1200 members.
11] Andreas Blom and Hiroshi Saeki, "Employability and Skill Set of Newly Graduated Engineers in India," www-wds.worldbank.org, April, 2011.
12] Harsimran Julka and Pankaj Mishra, "Only 25 % IT Graduates Readily Employable: NASSCOM," www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com, April 7, 2011.
13] "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Comparing the Quantity and Quality of Engineering Graduates in the United States, India and China," www.nae.edu, July 27, 2006.
14] "Why Choose India- NASSCOM," www.kpoexperts.com
15] Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the largest provider of Information technology in India. As of 2011, it was ranked as No.1 in providing IT services in India. Its headquarters is located at Mumbai and about 198500 employees are working in it. The revenue of TCS in 2011 was Rs 331.12 billion.
16] "Top 20 IT Companies in India," www.rediff.com, August 3, 2011.
17] "We Need Critical Thinkers," www.campusconnect.infosys.com, June 13, 2011.

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