Given the massive layoffs and an overall slowdown due to macroeconomic factors, the tech industry may not be in the pink of health post the Covid-19 pandemic. However, most companies are struggling to bridge the talent gap that costs them billions of dollars every year.
Per a 2023 EY-iMocha report, 81% of organisations in India are experiencing a shortage of tech talent, while a November 2023 report by tech industry lobby NASSCOM puts the demand-supply gap to 25-27%. Interestingly, the digital talent gap is projected to rise to 28-29% in 2028, a 2.8x rise with the demand surpassing 6 Mn. Although many organisations increasingly rely on upskilling their existing workforce, the talent gap widens, impacting tech innovations and India’s overall economic growth.
As nearly 40% of recruiters find it challenging to find the right talent for the right job within a short timeframe (tech hiring, on average, may take up to 45 days), skilling and placement-driven career institution Masai School has developed Talent Circle, a dedicated talent hunt and hiring programme catering to tech companies.
Operational since 2023, Talent Circle handpicks Masai School’s top tech talent and provides a range of personalised services to member companies to ensure ‘right hiring’ in the shortest possible time – within 24 hours.
For context, Masai School is an outcome-based career institute that provides long-term courses in web development (frontend, backend and full-stack), and data analytics to anyone aged 18-28 years old. These courses come with specialisation in SQL and MERN/MERN Stack, including React, Node.JS & MongoDB.
The edtech startup also uses artificial intelligence for skill assessment, competency mapping and matching job opportunities across startups and legacy tech companies.
Masai School does not charge any upfront tuition fees for these courses. Students sign a ‘pay after placement agreement’ wherein they agree to pay a fixed monthly payment for 36 months or less. Corporates that hire from Masai are not charged anything.
The startup has onboarded more than 4500 companies, assisting them in finding industry-ready tech talent. Among its corporate clients are industry giants like IBM, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra and Capgemini and startup unicorns across sectors, including Paytm, Swiggy, Dream11, Ola, ShareChat and more. Together, they have hired 3500+ students.
“With Talent Circle, we aim to provide tech-focussed companies access to the top 1% of talent at Masai. We understand their pain points as organisations spend a lot of time and resources hiring candidates with tech expertise and then end up with the wrong hires,” said Prateek Shukla, cofounder and CEO of Masai School.
Advantage Talent Circle: Key Objectives and Corporate Benefits
Talent Circle aims to fulfil three key objectives.
First, it aims to streamline time-consuming hiring processes by providing access to a pool of top candidates from Masai School and implementing a well-aligned selection procedure. In some cases, the typical hiring span can be reduced from 40-45 days to just a few days, but more on that later.
Second, it can minimise spending on training and other resources post-hiring, as Masai recruits are employable, industry-ready professionals.
Finally, it can help companies identify and hire people who are essentially problem-solvers and can adapt to new work environments from Day 1.
In addition, the programme ensures minimum offer drops, eliminating the HR bane wherein recruits reject job offers or do not turn up on the joining day after an elaborate interview procedure.
How Talent Circle assists corporate partners: Shukla says the Talent Circle programme is created to cater to companies of all sizes and diverse requirements. Its key benefits include:
Year-round access to a nationwide talent pool: Unlike time-bound campus placements, Talent Circle offers a 24×7 channel for member companies to tap into a diverse pool of tech professionals. Moreover, all Masai School candidates are prompt engineers skilled in Vue, Flask, MySQL or MongoDB, which means they can leverage GenAI to maximise productivity.
Seamless hand-holding: After onboarding, every company is assigned a dedicated relationship manager who oversees the hiring process and manages replacements (if required) at no extra cost. Account managers also collaborate with companies to align all hiring requirements. These may include understanding and refining hiring parameters, bringing candidates up to speed, providing recommendations to improve outcomes and ensuring smooth onboarding. After offer letters are issued, account managers help procure necessary documents, freeze joining dates and minimise dropouts post-offers.
Exclusive benefits: Talent Circle members get complimentary access to Masai School’s exclusive HR community, tHRrive. This membership further enables priority access to flagship events and meetups across India, ensuring they are at the forefront of industry discussions and networking opportunities.
How Talent Circle’s 24-Hour Hiring Works
As HR experts point out, slow hiring is tantamount to low-quality hiring (all good candidates are snapped up by competition as soon as they are in the market), hitting a company’s bottom line. The sluggishness could be due to extensive due diligence or a cautious measure adopted by tech companies amid headwinds. But even in a tight job market, around 60% of candidates say that the hiring process should take less than a month, according to a PwC report.
Understanding the need for speed in red-hot fields like technology, Talent Circle can complete the hiring process in 24 hours by compressing multi-round interviews into a single-day event.
Shukla says that the programme can execute a much faster hiring process based on the startup’s internal quality assessment and enhancement from the get-go. It starts with the Masai School Admission Test (MSAT), where subject-matter experts (SMEs) analyse each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. Based on the outcomes, personal training modules are designed to improve and upgrade one’s professional skills which they undergo over the next eight months, added Shukla.
When job requirements start coming in from Talent Circle companies, seven to 10 Masai ‘grads’ are picked by SMEs through swift and rigorous selection measures. As these final recommendations are internally evaluated at Masai School, keeping in mind core hiring requirements, it speeds up the screening and skill-matching rounds for hiring organisations. Therefore, interviews can be scheduled within 24 hours.
Can Talent Circle Bridge The Talent Gap?
In today’s fast-evolving job market ruled by industrial automation and GenAI, mastering employable skills to meet complex job demands is no longer easy. For instance, changing business models will require new skill sets like problem-solving, effective listening or specific technical knowledge. Add to that the unstable equilibrium of the Indian job market – only 17% of the workforce is engaged by the organised sector – giving rise to stiff competition at all levels, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh ground realities are further worsened by geopolitical unrest and a global fear of stagflation. As a result, getting hired and staying relevant largely depend on keeping up-to-date with Industry trends, knowledge upgrades and constant upskilling.
This is all the more significant if considered in sync with the latest job forecast. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2023 by the World Economic Forum, approximately 40 Lakh digitally-enabled roles will emerge, while more than 75% of the companies will look to adopt big data, cloud computing and AI technologies in the next five years.
Although these developments call for more specialised knowledge, even at entry levels, the critical question remains. How employable is the Indian workforce in the tech space?
According to the country’s Graduate Skill Index 2023, 44% are employable for top technical jobs compared to 53% for top non-technical jobs. Understandably, this leaves vast room for improvement that the traditional academic curricula cannot immediately address.
The widening skill gap calls for effective collaboration between academia and the corporate sector and provides massive scope for growth for the likes of Masai School, AttainU, Newton School, and Coding Ninjas. As these new-age startups train young graduates in emerging technologies and offer them employment opportunities in the formal sector, they gear up for a pivotal role in bridging the tech skill gap and accelerating access to professional pathways for all members of society.
