Abstract

From the early 21st century, as India started emerging as a global leader in Information Technology (IT) sector, the demand for quality manpower for the IT industry was high. So educational institutions and the IT industry realized the need for increasing the number of industry-ready graduates to meet the growing demands of the IT industry. But the IT players noticed certain skill gaps in graduates from engineering colleges, and felt they had to spend a lot of money on training them. Some of them therefore decided to take proactive steps to make the engineering graduates industry ready and employable. Many companies, after understanding the need for the Industry-academia relationship to meet the demand for quality manpower, launched certain training initiatives to make fresh engineering graduates employable and industry ready. One such initiative was Campus Connect launched in 2004 by Infosys, the second largest software services company in India. Infosys’s Campus Connect was an Industry-Academia interaction program intended to enhance the skills of engineering graduates and to create a pool of talented industry-ready engineering graduates in colleges itself. The colleges partnering with the Infosys Campus Connect program were provided with the curriculum which included industry related data and technical advancements in IT and the requirements of IT industry. In addition, students were provided with training modules related to leadership and personality development along with subject relevant topics. Students were made to undertake certain projects which would elevate their technical knowledge and the solutions were retained by the organization for future use. Faculty members too were provided with training to deal with the Infosys curriculum. Many analysts opined that with the help of programs like Infosys Campus Connect, the requirements of IT industry and academia could be met. Thus, the case study details and explores the talent crisis across Industries, especially in the IT Industry, and the reasons for the crisis. It then elucidates the Campus Connect Initiative and how Infosys benefited through it. Though critics argued that despite the many initiatives taken by the IT majors to make the graduates employable, the talent crisis continued, Infosys continued to place its hopes on the Campus Connect Initiative.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• To understand and discuss the talent crisis and the major reasons for it.
• To understand the Campus Connect initiative by Infosys and how it creates a pool of talented industry-ready individuals.
• To discuss whether Infosys benefited through Campus Connect.
• To explore ways through which the talent crisis could be avoided.

Keywords

Talent Crunch, Talent Crisis, Infosys Campus Connect, Employability, Employee Development, Training, Academia and Industry Collaboration, Industry Case Studies, Principal Learning, Mentoring, Coaching, Soft Skills Development, Technical Skills Training, Leadership Skills Training, IT and Engineering, Faculty Enablement Program, Faculty Sabbaticals, Foundation Program Roll-Out, Industry based Electives, Infosys