This is a wonderful time to be starting up. You will come across very few people who will give comparisons to all the benefits they get working for big corporates. Its one such time. Hiring will be slightly easier, and retaining them will be even more easier.
Even in the midst of all that, it does seem that a lot of the Startup Companies are hardpressed for resources here in India. Here’s a solution.
A few of us have been talking about putting together a centre that trains people (as blank slated as freshers) on the common technologies that people use while building Web related products – the usual PHP, Python, AJAX, MySQL, etc etc and getting them upto speed on mashups, APIs, documentation, and moving forward. That is the level of skill that most of the startup community folks are looking for it seems. Or am I wrong here?
If I am right, then there is a simple way around it. Every chapter of OCC in the country is doing quite well. I heard from Santhosh that Pune is a 300 people group now (though I do suspect that the turn out ratio would be still less), but who knew Pune had 300 people who would be open to being part of a community right? And the same case has gone on with Bangalore, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, and even now and then with Mumbai.
Here’s the thought. What if in one of the OCCs a dozen of the startup companies, especially the folks who can code and code really well, commit that they will run a two month training program for people in these languages? It is going to take a bit of time and commitment, but there are a lot of resources already on the web, and with a couple of screencasts, and proper documentation, you could essentially also use it as training material for the next batch of people that you hire in your company later on.
What I am proposing is that a batch of technology entrepreneurs, each taking a week to cover different aspects of the course, could put their hands together to collaboratively solve an issue which is haunting a great many of them.
So if you could fix one of the startups offices as the centre for this activity, Put up a wiki where people can sign up for this course, and these 12 startup entrepreneurs/programmers get a chance to do a round of questioning and if they think that the candidate would be able to perform with some guidance, then the community as a whole comes together to train these few candidates and at the end of it, can assimilate them into the company.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this can be made to work:
1. Most freshers are scared of working for startups. The first question I face all the time is “Will they train us?”
2. People who do undergo any sort of training, usually go for some MS Certification and those courses are expensive. Its not like you can afford to get the developmental licenses anyways, and since they have themselves invested in getting trained, the salary expectations are going to be higher from you.
3. At the moment there are very few people who can talk about these technologies for the mass community to learn from. Perhaps contributing to the general knowledge of the masses to improve their skill level, if reached critical mass, will start churning on its own.
4. More people trained on OpenSource Technologies (that’s really what enables Startups), might also slightly increase the chances of people contributing back to Opensource. *fingers crossed*
5. I also think that most startup founders struggle to explain what they have in their head to others. And teaching concepts to others gets you to that level where tomorrow when you need to grow a community around your product, you can converse in a manner that the people can comprehend.
And of course, none of this has to be done for free. I’d strongly suggest that the teams charge the candidate 3000 – 4000Rs a month for this. That is also additional revenue, so its not technically charity either.
So, there is only one question that lingers. Worth giving it a try? What do you think?
Join the conversation at The Startup Guy, to pitch your thoughts on the matter.
- Launching an Experiment to Spot Problems Worth Solving - November 2, 2015
- Introducing In50hrs Healthcare Edition - May 14, 2014
- Ideas Pitched / Prototyped at In50hrs Pune 5 - September 16, 2013
@Vijay: Hire the best for yourself = what everyone will want? Therefore no point doing it together because we will compete for the best resources anyway? I mean why would I train for small money if I can’t be sure to land the best set of people that I train? (a week’s work may come to 25K even if someone got the full money for a 25 batch, 4 k a month type)
If the deal is to hire the best, it can’t be done by group training. At least I don’t think so, for lack of incentives eventually – unless the incentive is altruistic. IMHO, It’s better to do it as a profitable initiative otherwise it’s likely to fizzle out.
@Kumar: Sounds interesting
@Deepak: I dont think this IS altruistic. I am saying train, and hire the best for yourself. Whats altruistic about that? Its all about fulfilling one’s needs. You might have a point about the low cost labor, but that might or might not happen, and for all our sakes I hope we dont get hit too hard.
Vijay: I’m not sure I agree with the no-economic-situation-hit; in fact I strongly disagree 🙂 What I’m saying is we will be in very bad shape next year, and probably for two more years after that. The US is probably in worse doo-doo. Yet, I don’t want to “call” the market, and I hope you’re right for my own sake because this will impact my life too.
Also, senior programmers were cheap in the 2002-03 time frame – purely because there wasn’t much to go around then. I don’t know if “senior” = people with a lot of experience or “senior = a person who is essentially a fresher, but has been trained on certain technologies (1-2 year experience types). I was talking about the latter – not heavily experienced folks, though some of them will also be easier to find. If the latter, then I think you’ll get a lot of them in the market, and they have a lot of enthu, and ability. For them, the cost of living is not dramatically high – not as high as it is for married or older folks at least. So if there are more such people around, why would you want to train freshers?
Unless there’s a business model there – then it makes sense.
I think personally that an initiative drive out of profit has a greater impact and sustainability than one that is primarily altruistic. Meaning, no gain, no pain.
Vijay,
A friend of mine in Hyderabad has started a training center (he calls it a Finishing School) recently.His focus is to train programmers on Java/J2EE/Hibernate etc. for product companies.He is not charging much from the students, because he expects to make money by offering trained programmers who can hit the ground running, to needy startups and even IT service providers.
If any one is interested, in collaborating with him, please write to me and I will connect you with him.
cheers,
Kumar
Deepak.
Agree with you, that it does require some structuring. Atleast for rhe sake that the team coming together should know which part they are going to be responsible for. So if you are going to be training on LAMP, its nice to know that I am responsible for specific sections and concepts to be taught.
I however will say that there are plenty of open material out there from the web school, and ebooks such as “Dive into python” that you can glance at it and know what all you HAVE to cover.
Can there be a business made out of this, possibly yes. But in the intentions of lowering the cost of hiring, it might be cheaper and economical for the startups themselves to do this.
As for the economic situation, I dont think India is going to get hit by much. And even when hit, most of your senior level programmers wont come for cheap. Inflation has done a great deal of damage since the 00s as to what is the basic pay we need to live comfortably. If you ask me, addressing the untapped market will not only solve your problem economically, but also build loyalty such that a great team is built. Double bottom line? 🙂