Minding the talent gap in the Indian IT sector

According to Futureskills Prime, a digital skilling program from MeitY and NASSCOM, every 3 years 50% of Indian IT industry's 4 million strong workforce needs to be reskilled. To add to this, digital disruption, accelerated by the pandemic, is already transforming every industry. Therefore the gap between the need for skilled IT workforce to cater to the digital transformation is widening at a rapid pace. While employment opportunities are growing, the skilled workers are missing. Urgent action from all stakeholders is required if India is to meet its goal of a trillion dollar digital economy over the next few years.

In a recent development, Indian Staffing Federation, an industry body representing over a hundred organized staffing companies operating in India, signed an MoU with Futureskills Prime. According to a statement released by the two organizations, the partnership addresses Indian IT sector's rising demand for skilled professionals. It will attempt to bridge the demand-supply asymmetry between skills and job opportunities.

"The Indian IT services sector, which has actively contributed to India's growth in the last three decades, and ISF, that has strengthened the staffing industry through its compliant deployment in the past decade, will together take Indian IT talent to newer organizations in the coming years," says Lohit Bhatia, President, Indian Staffing Federation.

"The ISF and NASSCOM partnership will enable Indian Staffing Federation members to leverage NASSCOM's reach in the education and skilling ecosystem to recruit students from colleges and vocational training institutes. This could include assessments that students can take to demonstrate proficiency, thus enabling them towards appropriate employment opportunities to improve their career options and growth," adds Suchita Dutta, Executive Director, Indian Staffing Federation shared:

ISF and NASSCOM will also work on joint research on critical workforce related subjects, given the importance of contract staffing as a dominant model in the ‘Workforce of the Future' as a way forward to work through staffing industry.

According to the MoU, in order to facilitate Career Services Support (CSS) provided by NASSCOM to trained job-seekers for IT-ITeS related job roles, the ISF-Futureskills Prime partnership would include demand aggregation by ISF through its 100+ members. ISF members will have their employees, especially IT-ITES white collar employees, up-skilled on new, emerging technologies and the related professional skills leveraging the FutureSkills Prime ecosystem, amongst others. The SSC NASSCOM will be additionally curating special DeepSkilling programs with respect to aligned courses for the staffing industry workforce with the FutureSkills Prime partners, including OEM and training partners, in specific areas of new and emerging technologies.