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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@ Krish: Nothing beats Monetary benefits, I’ll give you that anyday 🙂 Anyways, thanks for your thoughts mate. Its been long since we caught up. We should touch base soon.
@Gaurav: As an entrepreneur one is also told to ignore naysayers 😀 But I get your point. Thanks for taking the time to express your thoughts.
@Vijay,
Thanks for your reply to my comment.
The point I make is that Tech evangelism of the kind you suggest (“community training”) is feasible when you are spared of enterprise pressures. A startup team that runs on low gas, minimum staff and with the onus of having to hit milestone(s) (either founder-set or investor mandated) will find it hard to boil the ocean and still stay focused on getting past the gate. It should rather start with boiling its own bucket of water.
Neither web domain nor the technologies you mentioned (PHP, Python, Ajax, My SQL) are of narrow niche. They are capable of being ported anywhere. I wonder how you hope to tether the people you trained!
Getting experienced people is neither a stigma nor does it deprive the startup of any sheen attached to youthfulness of its team – so long as productivity is the goal 😉 All that it needs is browsing around in the offline enterprise world, sincere outreach and a commitment to the singular objective – of monetization. Would you still differ 😉
We have a special training focussed towards hiring by Startups at Geekeerie.
Our first batch of Ruby on Rails developers ready for the Indian startup market is going to be available for hire soon.
Send us an email if you or startups you know are interested.
@Vijay,
As an entrepreneur I learned that, when four knowledgeable people say it’s a bad idea you do not keep on being defensive about it. Revise the idea, address the concerns and pitch it again. You do not have to give up the idea but surely refine it.
I also feel that this particular approach is way too much taxing on entrepreneurs time with rewards being marginal.I would rather hire four freshers myself knowing that they have an attitude to work in a startup, make a structural training internally and train them in my campus. The 80% you mentioned are not all the same as everyone likes to think. The huge gaps they have in terms of attitude and learning capabilities may be the most relevant thing for a start-up.
Here is another thought. How about asking a few start-ups around for small innovation projects within their organizations which they won’t mind getting implemented outside(every start-up I have done or known has many plans it has no time or energy or money for).
Get those projects implemented by freshers in a training institute under guidance of hired expert trainers.
The teams working on the project will be in touch with the start-up regularly for information and stats update with no other downside for the start-up.
A bootstrapping entrepreneur may even join as a trainer.
It will give entrepreneurs motivation to be involved(their project getting executed) + They will get to know freshers better, their capabilities, learning skills and attitude towards work. It will give freshers invaluable experience in getting hands on training on the worlds cutting edge technologies on R&D projects. Will sensitize them towards need of communication + tools usage aspect of the work.
The training institute will charge a fee for a fresher to join, and a fee to start-up if start-up decides to hire a fresher from it’s institute.(I admit the business model not well thought through..:-()
It can become your own incubation center for freshers and backward integration to existing incubation centers.
Krish,
You are back to square one, where we do nothing.
And I dont know the background image that one has talking about a startup. I am talking about a team (and we are very specific of web companies here – atleast to make things easier to start with) which rolls up its sleeves and is building that product to test it out in the open. Not the team with 10 years of domain experience to even manage to attract “experienced” “rusting away” folks.
Secondly, since we’ve squared in on the domain and even the technologies, the issue you spoke about, on training for one and being employed in another wont come in.
I see a nice trend where everyone from the startups side is saying they need to try this out, and everyone else saying it wont work. Interesting 🙂 Maybe its an experiment one’s oughta just try.
And let me clarify this. I am not talking about startups becoming trainers (as Alok was pointing out). I am just saying, if you are going to train anyways, why not do it in a communal way.