Haryana govt wants Gurgaon BPOs to hire local talent

The Haryana government wants the BPO companies in Gurgaon to conduct campus interviews in state-owned colleges to motivate students to acquire skills that would help them get jobs in industries dealing with IT-enabled services (ITeS).

Sources in the state education department said that the industry leaders can choose the college in the region from where they want to kick off this initiative. It has been some time since the state government has been discussing the possibility of designing the college syllabus in such a manner that it makes the state's youngsters more employable.

While Gurgaon has emerged as the major BPO hub in north India, the manpower requirement is met from either Delhi or its adjoining cities. Confirming that the state government is thinking of incorporating subjects in college curriculum to meet the industry requirement, higher education secretary S S Prasad said that a high-level task force is looking into the suggestions made by the industry. Prasad was in Gurgaon to attend a workshop on Monday with the Nasscom representatives and top industry leaders.

This was also attended by deans and senior faculty of about 25 colleges besides representatives from companies such as Cognizant, Fidelity, IBM, Genpact and WNS. The education secretary said that the task force under the chairmanship of the chief secretary is meeting on January 20 to give concrete shape to the proposals made by the BPO industry. "The curriculum should be relevant to the industry. There is a need to fill the gap that exists between the industry and our education system," Prasad added.

It was decided in the workshop that the industry and the academia would jointly organize faculty training workshops, summer internships, industry visits for faculty and students, focused grooming of select interested students to help achieve early results and organize job fairs and campus interviews.

Subinder Khurana, chairman, Nasscom regional council, said that the focus is on improving infrastructure, expanding the industry footprint and increasing employment of local talent in the industry. Rakesh Kapoor, managing director of Summit Technologies, said that the education initiative is targeted at increasing the absorption of local talent in the IT/ BPO industry.