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.
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I know a few startups that have already tried this and failed. To narrate what they faced —
Startups have heterogeneous manpower needs as they belong to different genre. Why should a founder of a telecom revenue assurance solutions enterprise train a Java coder with telecom domain skills who could as well move over to – say, embedded systems design firm? It happened to one of my clients.
One sure way to deal with startup staffing issues is to go for skilled candidates that are rusting away in large enterprises, with mortgages already paid off and feeling bored because of lack of challenge. That way startups get a EME bundle – of Enthusiasm, Maturity and Experience 😉
The pain point across the entrepreneurial niche (the segment is huge to consider it a business opportunity)-
lack of technical knowledge.
I also have experienced it .And to solve it too ,i have been calling on and off my batchmates and friends in TCS,IBM etc to know whether using Ajax would be costly and what efforts are required.And they dont care for my innocent questions.
Solution:IIM’s campus (A,B,C,L,K,G) can be used to impart training to entrepreneurs or employees.Model could be that a company (or two) can be formed as finishing school whose initial business would come from these entrereneurs and later on for scaling this finishing school can cast its net wide.
Entrepreneurs also should be aware that they are forming sites like http://www.rent4sure.com, http://www.easy2let.com http://www.andheriplusl.com to pit against the property portals .Cant the individuals unite to fight the might of makaan ,99acres and so on.
This is so because that dot com business is easiest to do and even if we take so much time to build this ,we will perish with time.
Alok, Just as Deepak pointed out, I would absolutely agree with you that there is a business opportunity here. And there are folks trying to tap into that opportunity and scale up.
We have two choices. 1) Wait for them to grow to a point where they can train all the manpower that startups need. or 2) Atleast take up something that will meet halfway with that initiative so that eventually that will take over (anything with financial motive obviously has better longevity).
But we need to start somewhere. There are close to a thousand startups coming up everywhere and I dont see the ready-made manpower being large enough to sufficiently cater to all the need that is arising.
if you do an average breakup that 1% of people who graduate are uber smart and will hit the ground running, a 19 – 25 % will be freshers who are smart enough to learn and another 80% (half of whom are probably not employable), the trick is to turn that 19%+ into useful resources than fighting over that 1% — ofcourse all the percentage breakups are rough, but I does correlate to the manpower situation out there.
We need to do something, and this is something to do in the meantime, which will lead to something else.
And I would never use trainers to train a crucial resource for a startup – a startup being the core team that is in the beginning and crucial stages of formation. If i am going to take in a fresher, I’d rather train him/her so that I know how to relate to him, and know his strength and weaknesses. All of that matters at some point.
imho, bad idea.
startups are constrained severely for resources to do what they are supposed to do. it would be very hard to now contributing to a training initiative.
another way to look at it – whats the market failure one is trying to address here? is the training business not lucrative enough? is it an attempt to fix the quality of trainers (by making people who didnt want to be trainers in the first place, go out and train because they are in a startup?) otherwise, there should be an independent entrepreneurial opportunity around setting up training workshops – a la STG.
Deepak,
Coming to training I have 2 friends who are in training business….Thought you may like the stats….
Friend 1:
20 +years in services (like TCS, WIPRO,Tech Mahindra etc)
Started training in web and erp. Got some consultancy assignments.
Has very good contacts.
Result: Not yet successful. Contemplating going back to work
Friend 2:
10 years experience in Product company.
Started training in Storage (does not know much about other technologies). Has some innovative ideas like training on Weekend and holidays, trains thru the net for US customers.
NO Contacts
Result: Seems to be growing. (Took me for dinner:-)