Could you please tell me the qualities you look into when you recruit new people at entry. If OpenClass sends a person who is from IGNOU but who can build a complete social game on Facebook himself which 200 people have played would you recruit him or an IITian with just a degree?
I am reading your blog posts for quite some time and feel you are a great mentor. I am currently running an initiative called OpenClass, the aim of which is to create an eco-system where knowledge can be exchanged. I think the biggest deficiency of current education system is the disconnect between industry and students.
At OpenClass we aim to bridge this gap (currently we do not do this for profit but we are not an NGO since I think that all NGOs are corrupt and I think reasonable and just profit is a good aim) . Many people I meet tell that the aim of college or training institute should be to teach programming. I differ. I think the college should teach conceptualization, planning, programming, testing, marketing etc all holistically. As a gaming company founder in my earlier venture I had tough time recruiting people who had knowledge of all these.
I opened OpenClass to give engineering students a feel of the industry and imparting them skills to enable them to complete a project from all angles holistically. I have even trained a non-engineer graphic designer to build a complete J2ME game himself.
Recently I met an IITian who told me that big and medium sized companies do not need people with holistic 360 degree skills. They only want pure coders.
This is the reason I am asking this question.
Also the only way OpenClass can impart practical skills is by bringing people from industry for 2-3 hour sessions with students once every quarter. Do you think people like you will send there team leaders or other team members for such sessions. In return you have the option of recruiting such people.
I know it is a long mail but to change the education system I need support of people like you!
Munish Goyal
Purely depends on the long/short term requirements.
More than tech. skills, attitude and aptitude and raw analytical ability are also very important.
If learn-ability and willingness/passion to deliver is there, then i would go with the IITian. This is not to undermine the IGNOU or other university grad, but saying from what I know of IITians as we all know.
For short term project, if getting the work done is your priority without any time for ramp-up at all, then the immediately skilled person is what you will like to go for.
My 2 cents.
Tejas Shah
Firstly – Any game/app on FB can get around 50-100 MAU’s (Monthly Average Users) so it’s not really a big thing for any individual to make a game/app which has that many people. The difference would be if the app has 50,000+ MAU’s then it makes a difference to a certain extent.
Secondly – Your point about imparting Practical skills by bringing people from the industry for 2-3 hour sessions with students once every quarter is impractical itself. You cannot impart Practical skills through sessions. These skills only come through working on a regular basis in the field itself and with experience. I would rather make the students spend one day every week with the same individual in their company on projects which would help the students learn these practical skills and face the problems and solve them. Only stories and experiences can be given by individuals to others, everything else is purely achieved through sheer hardwork by individuals themselves under a constant guidance by industry peers.
Thirdly – In terms of who is better it simply depends on the kind of profile you would want the person to work for. For eg. I am an engineer who is working in the business side of Media & Entertainment & I think I am more useful in this segment instead of slogging my ass out in coding. Although I do spend some of my leisure time learning technology, programming applications, etc.
Big & Medium sized companies need focused individuals who can work and be productive in the role they are given. Some could be great all rounders some and great specialist’s. What speaks is the perspective.
Munish Goyal
Agree with Tejas on points 1 & 2 and last.
Saurabh, as you said..
“…Recently I met an IITian who told me that big and medium sized companies do not need people with holistic 360 degree skills. They only want pure coders”.
Thats not exactly true, atleast of product companies. There coding is only 10% of the job, ok. incl. design etc say 40-50% . And the holistic qualities needed to deliver, make the product successful even at 1 engineer level (few modules/features of the product), are much more beyond just coding.
Mahesh Khambadkone
Your question is phrased to bias the IGNOU student !
I think it’s improper to expect anyone to have knowledge in all of conceptualization, planning, programming, testing, marketing etc. – what you need is someone who is good in any one, can / is open to understanding the importance of the other activities, and can play a useful team member role.
Balaji Viswanathan
For my startup portal – TheAgni, I meet a lot of startup founders and here is my observation. Out of 10 successful startups I interviewed recently, 3 of them were second year college drop outs and 5 of them did some 3 year program in a no-name college. Founder of Pinstorm, Mahesh Murthy, has sold vacuum cleaners and from the humble beginnings has gone on to become one of the important players in Indian startup scene. Long story short, for a startup it doesn’t really matter if it is IGNOU or IIT as long as the guy is smart and has the right attitude.
My startup is hiring and we would welcome both IITians and IGNOU or for that matter even non graduates who posses abilities to learn, work well in a team and good at multi-tasking.
Jayesh Gopalan
I think Alok is the best person to answer this question.
The project he has created is going to be valuable or an added advantage at the time of interview.
But apart from that too the candidate need other skills and other qualities like integrity,hard working and attitude to learn new things.
Doesn’t matter if he is from IGNOU or IIT.
But the one thing i have seen in IIT people is that they never give up on anything 🙂
Ashwin C Parulkar
IITans earn their degrees by gather ing knowledge -it is the fundamental requirement
others get their’ by gathering ‘Information’
Ashwin C Parulkar
Yatin you always have a POView about and thats great, agreed
Eventually Human beings will get fade up of FB is the fate I believe for sure -I think thats the vision you are talking
Jitendra Chaturvedi
Saurabh, you have the right idea. Let me make a coule of observations that could clear the haze in front of your eyes:
1. There will always be enough companies/startups who’d need skilled IGNOU grads more than the IITen to absorb your batches. Life exists outside of medium and big companies 🙂
2. Ultimately it is a branding game as most others are (Alok could testify :)), assuming your product is good. Your students will be valued only as much by the companies as your brand is. More or less that is the case with IITs too. Make your brand equity. Be Seen. Do workshops; have Alok as keynote speaker, seriously.
3. When OpenClass is looked up to, companies and maybe even IITs will be glad to send their experts for lectures. Have faith in your idea and stick to it for a few years. It will work.
4. An alternate model could be: bring up the skills of fresh engg grads in say 3 months. Invite industry recruiters (use contacts, pulls whatever) and ask them to shortlist the candidates that they could ‘choose from’ if the candidates had the right skills. Now, train this chosen batch on the company specific skills for say another 2-3 months. Ask the company to test the chosen batch and make the final pickings. Proposed right, this should make sense to the recruiters because it saves them the cost of re-training themselves and the cost of lost man-hours too.
Hope this helps. Don’t ask too many people, just do it and give it a few years.
Mahesh Khambadkone
Saurabh, I visited OpenClass – interesting. I was curious if you thought of positioning OpenClass to final year (or even earlier) engineering students as well?
Here’s my gripe : we come across lots of resumes. Half the time the project has no relevance to what the candidate has got a job in. Secondly, the projects seem so mundane.
In today’s world with access to (programming) libraries, Google, opensource tools, a smart student is going to be able to develop something more meaningful that can showcase their capabilities, plus give a sense of achievement. And very likely give them a project that industry needs, to complete.
Saurabh Jain
Thanks for your advice and support!
Saurabh Jain
I want those others who are more than 95% of students to also gather knowledge. I feel that they are not able to get knowledge due to lack of ecosystem and self confidence.
Saurabh Jain
My friend if we want to have people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Zuckerberg coming out of this country we need people who are masters of everything with ability to work under team conditions. We aim for that. Your points are good and I will keep them in mind for OpenClass.
Mitul Limbani
Startups would hire the IGNOU guy – reason being most startups are run by money from friends and families, in short own money.
Well Established organization would hire IIT grad – reason being its now public money and if an IIT Grad didnt perform, their hiring skills wont be questioned 🙂
Saurabh Jain
Thanks for the advice. Your response has motivated me further!