Oh No .. Not a start-up again !!

India’s first credit rating agency CRISIL was incorporated on January 29, 1987. Mr N Vaghul from ICICI and Mr Pradeep Shah from HDFC were the first Chairman & MD respectively. 40 people all with great credentials and experience were chosen to form the first team but were all disillusioned. There was not much work to do, they were building all these systems, but there was not enough business. The team was concerned if it was really going to work. Most businesses usually have a long incubation period – say, two or three years. For CRISIL, things started to look up only after 2 years. When it comes to newly incorporated game-changing businesses, it had always been so and always will be.

Students & young job aspirants in India have started to show their affinity to newly established organizations because of the wide scope, the challenge, the take-away, and the growth they provide. Jobs at big companies & established institutions offering enough assurance or job-security might not be their obvious choice today; hierarchy and rigid work structure are presumed to be inherent there. While these job aspirants still battle to understand the pros & cons of working with a start up and arrive at a conclusive decision, start up management’s have their own issues to worry about. Identifying the right talent, hiring process and assessing employability forever challenge them, and attrition – even more.

As known to all, there is a direct correlation between employability, employment, and education. Good education and training will produce more number of employable candidates, leading to a higher employment scenario. I was interacting with BE students at one of the many engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh when I was horrified to know that more than 60% of the students present for the session took up BE only because Govt of AP was paying for their study. Engineering never interested them, they don’t have to pay a single penny except for the cigarettes they smoke during recess, they enrolled but have no plans for their career, and don’t have the faintest idea of changes taking place out in the world. This is the unbelievable but also the truth about the ‘State of education’. According to CII, 70 percent of job-seekers in India are educated but not employable. Moreover, less than 10 percent have recognized professional certifications. 

While all our job-seekers are busy convincing their prospective-employers that they could be hired, many employers are equally busy educating job applicants why they might not fit the organization, or how the salaries they expect are unreasonable for the qualifications & skills they have. Many deserving candidates find the job and that company they were looking for. Several other are still in the search for similar opportunities their talented twins managed to find, but not exactly with the same skill and talent in them.

Multiple attempts, flying time together with failed search drive them to anxiety and depression. Businesses acting like Training Institutes and Job Consultancies keep making money by promising these job seekers training and guaranteed placement. A small section of these job seekers are lucky or wise to choose a place that would finally help them kick-start their career, and the ones who do not, simply shell out money & still live their nightmare. What they fail to realize is, there are places that are willing to provide them a transformative experience that could make them employable but for that to happen, their ‘pay – me – to – teach – me’ illusion must be abandoned. Nothing comes free and definitely not learning. Aspirants are skeptical of Internship opportunities (both paid & unpaid) and full time opportunities from small & newly found organizations. Their inability to take the first step still leaves them in an unending wait.

As someone with just 5 years of professional work experience and now a fresh entrepreneur, I had to finally deal with hiring myself. After tired scrutinizing, patient interviewing and both; painful and amusing interactions with over 50 applicants, I could finally manage to find just the ‘TWO’ I was looking for. Or that is how I feel for now. I may be wrong in every word I said barring the CRISIL story, that interactive session and the CII study but this here is just another opinion of a guy attempting entrepreneurship like million others. Irrespective of what each one of us feels, I wish myself, the job-seekers, and all the entrepreneurs Good Luck!!