Brilliance, by any degree…
The Hindu Business Line — September 17, 2007

…is what TCS is looking for, as part of its Ignite programme, wherein it handpicks talented non-engineering graduates and gives them a chance to change their career code. eWorld met four youngsters who caught the IT heavyweight's eye.

A business reporter typically leads a humdrum life that can never be made into a motion picture. There are times when you wonder where the next exciting story is and wade past a blur of product launches, mindless numbers from quarterly results and press releases filled with inanities. Then comes a story that touches your heart. Here's one such.

This is not a story about an industry strapped for manpower. Nor is it about companies doing a good turn to society. This is a story about individuals whose capability has so far gone missed, not least because no one cared to ferret it out. And, this is as much a story about a company that dug deep to discover that ability. Read on…

Talent is not the exclusive preserve of any particular group of people. This was the lesson that Dr Raman Srinivasan of TCS took away after he spent six months ferreting out manpower skills outside the usual pool of fresh engineering graduates that the IT software services industry dips into every year.

And this, he says, was his CEO, S Ramadorai's vision before those six months began.

TCS decided in March 2006 that it had to seriously go after brilliant people who weren't engineering graduates. To this end, Ramadorai set out three goals for Dr Srinivasan. These three diktats were to become the pillars on which Ignite (TCS' training programme for fresh, non-engineering graduates who make the grade for software services) now stands:

Have a diverse talent pool.

Make learning enjoyable, so as to awaken the inner child in adults.

Make the programme socially inclusive.

Dr Srinivasan and his team of six people took about six months from thought to the commencement of the programme for the inaugural batch. Ramadorai even hand-picked geographic areas that the team had to reach. This meant that the North-East, including Assam and Meghalaya, and Kerala, figured in the list of areas that the team had to visit.

Says Dr Srinivasan, "We had 100 candidates from Assam and another hundred from Kerala."

To recruit 500 candidates, the team reached and evaluated about 6,600 students across 215 colleges in the country. The recruiting team did this over 25 weekends or so.

Ask him flippantly if he has a count for the distance his team travelled across the country and Dr Srinivasan surprises you with "Seventy kilometres was the average distance my team travelled to rope in a candidate." He helps you recover from the shock of finding a piece of statistic even for this parameter, saying, "This is the TCS way. We measure all that can be measured."

Evaluation process
So, how did the team evaluate the candidates and decide that they were, in analytical skills, on a par with engineers? Simple, says Dr Srinivasan. "We made 125 fresh TCS employees, who were engineers, and took a test that examined analytical skills. We took the average and used that as the benchmark to evaluate non-engineering candidates for the Ignite programme. The same test was given out to the latter. Those who met the benchmark were further evaluated with interviews and other analytical tests such as jigsaw puzzles." Many of these candidates were actually pursuing a higher degree when TCS evaluated them. Among those chosen, TCS had to initiate communication not only with the students, but also the parents.

Since quitting midway through a degree is uncommon, how did TCS manage to convince candidates?

"We explained to the candidates and to their parents that they were pursuing a degree to get a good job. Here, we were offering them a good job. And, once they are TCS employees, they become immediately eligible to pursue further degrees while on the job. So they weren't losing out by signing up with us."

The second batch of 1,500 students has started the seven-month training now, to be followed by the third batch of 3,000 candidates.

Obviously, the intensity with which Dr Srinivasan and his team pursued the candidates need not be the same for every succeeding batch. Part of it could run off the steam created for the first batch. Says Dr Srinivasan, "Our first batch of recruits is so happy with the way things have gone that they would automatically recommend juniors from their colleges and even their siblings. So, we would keep seeing the momentum."

Key takeaways
What other learning did TCS take away from the whole exercise? Says Dr Srinivasan, "We found that even those who had not cleared our tests were positive and said that they would apply again."

Another learning was the significant gap between what the industry needs and what is taught in institutions. In order to help match the curriculum with industry requirements TCS is having teachers from those colleges, where it recruits candidates, come in and sit through extended sessions at the Ignite programme. "This helps college teachers understand what we need."

'Clicker' and other technologies
One curious gadget that you find students at the programme carry in their hands all the time is the 'clicker'. It looks like a remote control gadget but is used for group communication.

One instance of its use is in giving feedback for a particular lecture, at the end of the class itself. Says Dr Srinivasan, "At the end of the class, the professor has an idea of what the students thought of it all: good, all right, bad… His score appears on the same screen that he has been using to impart knowledge. It is unnerving but makes things fully transparent."

One pillar that the technology infrastructure is built on is the premise that English is not the first language of most candidates at Ignite. Says Dr Srinivasan, "The thought process is in their own language. So, all three data channels, ie the PowerPoint presentations, black-board annotation and the faculty itself, are all captured over video." Students then have the choice to revisit and review lectures at any desktop located at Ignite. This helps them since it eliminates the need to take notes.

The other contribution that technology has made here is to ensure candidates' comfort with virtual work. Says Dr Srinivasan, "In the industry, teams placed at different remote locations work together virtually. We have designed our courseware such that they get comfortable with the concept early on. In the Ignite premises itself, the lecturer would make his presentation in one room and candidates would 'attend' that lecture from three different class rooms." In other words, candidates get used to the idea of proximity without physical presence.

The third contribution from technology at Ignite has been the immediate assessment of candidates' quality of code-work. That is, available technology tools evaluate the quality of code submitted and candidates immediately get to know whether they have got the coding right. "We are debating if that 'immediate' is too soon and whether we should permit candidates to resubmit another set of code in five minutes' time, and so on." Ignite also helps candidates with what it calls 'intelligent tutors of programming.' Dr Srinivasan says, "Non-computer science graduates take time to get used to 'instructing' a computer to do their bidding, with the help of code. Now, computer programs teach them to do this in an intuitive and fun way. It is no longer intimidating for them."

Answering the 'why'
But, isn't this form of training what other institutes, whose core competence is education, such as NIIT and Aptech, are doing? TCS could well have picked up fresh non-engineers out of these institutes.

He replies, "We do take people with such profiles but not directly from colleges or private institutes. When they enter our company, they come with a minimum of three years' experience at other software companies. We now wish to train fresh science graduates ourselves. This is our core competence that we do not want to outsource."

Bringing 'em into the loop
Finally, for social inclusivity. Candidates at Ignite come from diverse backgrounds. Interviews with a sample of four candidates were a revelation. Incidentally, these four, whose photos you see to the left, are not the exception to the rule at Ignite, but the rule itself.

IT's their story

'Constructive advice'
"He may not be well-educated, but he certainly knew how to plan my life!" You can't miss Bindu's pride in her father's ability when she says this. And surely, he must know a thing or two about stretching the rupee, too. After all, not only did he, a construction worker from Palghat in Kerala, put Bindu through B.Sc but also supported her financially to pursue her B.Ed, during which course TCS picked her.

Says Bindu, "My father decided for me that I should pursue my B.Sc. Later, I was not sure whether to pursue an M.Sc or a B.Ed. He suggested that I should do the latter, since for that academic year, it was only a one-year course and would convert into a two-year course the next academic year. My father decided my career path for me. Without the direction he provided, I might not even have landed up at TCS." With a smile, she pre-empts any further questions you may have about her father's capability when she says, "He certainly knew how to manage financially, since he supported us three siblings at the same time!"

Did she have any doubts as to whether she and her friends should accept the TCS offer at all? Bindu is emphatic in her reply. "No. This was such an opportunity. Five of us got selected and we are all still here."

Bindu has two sisters, one pursuing her degree and the other in her final year of school. Says Bindu, "It is my turn to support them. I send home money to help with the finances." Earlier too, she used to take tuition for other students. "That was a great experience, earning and supporting them, back then," she says.

A novel weave
"I am now my family's right hand!" says M Naresh Babu. His ability to now send home money is making a huge difference to his family comprising parents and three siblings.

Hailing from Dharmavaram, Andhra Pradesh, Babu, whose father is into textile weaving, had dreamt of becoming an engineer since his seventh standard. However, when the time did come, the finances did not. When he obtained an engineering seat, his parents offered to sell a plot of land to overcome the financial obstacle. But Babu put his foot down and refused. He now says, "Had I accepted the offer, my two brothers and sister would not have had anything to go on, for their studies."

He says he has enough to be grateful about. Restless neighbours questioned his parents' sending Babu and his siblings to private schools and 'wasting' money. Neighbours goaded his parents, saying initiation into weaving would earn them bread early on in life. But Babu's parents did not budge from their belief that education would take their children places. "My mother, who has passed SSC, felt that she and her husband were anyway struggling to make ends meet. She did not want her children to suffer similarly. Hence the stress on education," he says.

Babu, who kept his options open with regard to a career in lecturing for Math, enrolled himself at the Institute for E-Governance and moved to Hyderabad for training. At the time TCS picked him up, he was at the Jawaharlal Knowledge Centre, a part of the institute that helps candidates shape themselves for interviews and presentation.

With knowledge gathered from inside and outside the classroom, Babu had reached a level where he could take classes for engineering students on both hardware and software.

Other companies did visit his campus but made offers to only those with a Computer Science background. Says Babu, "I felt bad about this, since I had faith in my ability but could not get a job offer."

So, did he weave sarees to help his parents? No, he says. But, he was more interested in the front-end work or the creative part of the work. He helped give birth to some unusual designs. "I never was an outgoing type. Rarely did I mix with friends for games and sports," he admits with a smile.

Babu was one of four selected for the interview among 125 applicants.

When he got the offer from TCS, he was surprised. Add the fact that his well-wishers were sceptical and asked him not to take the offer. "How can you be sure about this opportunity? What if you are not eligible for salary during your training period?" were their questions. Also, he was the only one from his town to have got this offer from TCS. So, guidance from a senior was clearly missing. Fortunately for Babu, he says the Tata Brand helped him decide that taking the offer was the best thing he could do for himself.

Babu would like his younger brother to do his MBA. "If he does not make it, I'd like him to try his luck at Ignite. This is something I'd highly recommend to my siblings."

Changing course
S Balaji is papa's boy. Indicate to him that he has obeyed his father's instructions at every stage in his career, he retorts with a smile and some mock surprise, "Isn't that what one should do?" Sure thing, especially since his father had lit up his son's path to success. Balaji fondly remembers his father, who passed away during his son's early days in undergraduate studies. "At the Plus Two level, it was my father who told me to opt for the Biology group at a school in Mayiladuthurai. Again, at the B.Sc level, he asked me to go for Computer Science."

"My family has never really found the going difficult for bare necessities, but with my father passing away, there was a reality check on the financial front."

After his father's demise, Balaji finished his B.Sc and began his MCA course at SASTRA University at Thanjavur. Says Balaji, "At the time of joining MCA, I didn't quite have all the money required for the fees. But we somehow managed." Balaji glosses over the details of the struggle in those years. It makes you wonder what the 'somehow' meant to him, the only child, and his mother at the time.

Typically, an MCA course lasts three years. But since Balaji had scored more than 60 per cent in his first degree, he went directly into the second year. There, in the first semester, under a professor's guidance, he opted to sit for the Ignite test. "I knew I'd be chosen since my professor had been building up my confidence by telling me that my logical skills were pretty good."

Now, his mother has moved from Kumbakonam to live with Balaji in Chennai.
But wasn't it a difficult decision, to take up employment mid-way through an educational degree? Balaji had only finished one semester at the MCA course. "Opting for TCS was the first decision I took on my own. Even my mother told me that I should decide what's best for myself. It's turned out for the better." You can't miss the optimism.

From saree to software
Since his tenth standard, R Ponnivalavan has helped his father, a textile weaver, make sarees. It used to take him between three and four days to weave one cotton saree. That helped him generate some money (about Rs 600 per saree) for his parents, who, residing at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, put him through a Bachelor of Science degree and then through a Master's in Science.

Now, Ponni writes software code at TCS.

"I was doing my M.Sc Maths second year, when I came across an advertisement in print for the TCS programme." As we speak, Dr Srinivasan gently interjects to inform us that Ponni scored among the highest in the case studies part of the training. The training he received at Ignite helped him apply his skills in developing 'a reasonably complex application using the C Language'.

Before TCS happened, Ponni wanted to make use of this exposure to Math to become a professor of Math. But he says that the financial constraints in his family might have forced him to think of other options and somehow move to Chennai to earn money, irrespective of choice of career.

The eldest son, Ponni now sends money back home to support his sisters, one of whom is doing her B.Com, while the other helps out in the saree business.

Ponni confesses that he never had a true idea of what computers were all about, his only exposure having been at school. But now he writes what Dr Srinivasan calls 'world-class enterprise software'. Ponni, and the other three candidates profiled in this page, write software for internal use by TCS. Ask Ponni the one big learning opportunity he had, other than writing code at TCS of course; he says with a bright smile, "I have finally learnt to cook, having to stay here without family."