Meeting the recruitment challenge: British Council India

Session

Title:	Meeting the Recruitment Challenge
Date and Time:	Thursday 19 November 2009 15.30-16.30 IST (GMT + 5.5 hours)

Recordings

Recording:

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Abstract

Transforming the workforce will require a new and innovative approach to recruitment in the ITES sector, beyond the current focus on ‘ready-to-eat’ talent (NASSCOM Everest Report, 2008). Recruitment is both a challenge and an opportunity; the right choices by stakeholders are likely to bring huge benefits to education, industry and society as India continues to grow. This session will explore the ways in which companies and institutions have already developed very practical English language learning, assessment and testing to prepare college leavers for the employment market:

A national testing initiative from NASSCOM

A business academy in Punjab

A global language benchmarking tool

Speakers will share their experience and learnings with the audience and discuss how these separate initiatives relate to the need to develop a common framework for recruitment which is benchmarked across education and industry sectors.

Speakers

Sarita Manuja	Twice awarded by the President of India for best practices in Teaching, Sarita Manuja has been into teaching since 1975. She was Principal of Senior Secondary School from 1987 to 2006 before being elevated to the present dual assignment of Director, Training and Director, Schools. The present role is very useful to understand the disconnect between the school and university segment She forayed into training from 1989 onwards with British Council - CBSE ELT project and since then, she has travelled across the length and breadth of the country and abroad for a number of training programmes as much as to participate in national and international conferences and seminars of distinction. In 2005, she was selected to be on the hot seat for remote participants in the International seminar on Leadership Training at Bath, UK, in which she was able to link up a number of participants from different parts of the world to the seminar through the web site, video conferencing and web-cast. She is also the Team Leader for the CESOL examination of Cambridge University.
Sandhya Chintala	Dr. Sandhya Chintala has a rich background in international and national education management. She brings to NASSCOM over 27 years of professional experience in positions of management and consultancy for Governments, Universities and teaching, both in India and internationally. Her role at NASSCOM includes providing the roadmap for NASSCOM’s education initiatives and programmes with a vision to development of education strategy, capacity building & assessment evaluation & the development of industry standards, liaising between industry academia and government and thus making India the preferred global destination for all IT and ITES requirements. Developing and administering innovative content, teaching and testing methodologies for both international and national curricula and multimedia courseware are her forte. She also excels in the design, development and deployment of face-to-face and e-learning solutions with reference to the products, processes and people required for them. Her research, publications, and activities are related to the successful development and implementation of communication skills integrated with formal and non-formal methods of teaching, her publications and activities are also related to the successful development and implementation of ‘Quality Assurance’ performance indicators. Sandhya’s professional methods help identify knowledge gaps, reflect diverse learning styles, focusing on multi-level and multi-grade teaching in the urban or rural ambience, thereby encouraging an interest in, and love for, the subject concerned, hence aiming to reduce the urban-rural educational divide. Prior to joining NASSCOM she was holding the office of the Director of various industry & academic organisations.
Gautam Bhushan	Gautam Bhushan is currently the Head of Learning & Development at WNS Global Services. Gautam comes with a rich experience in the area of L&D comprising Content Development, Business Development, Facilitation, Executive Coaching, Business Management, Global Alliance Management as well as establishing Business Franchises overseas. In the early part of his career, Gautam was selling high end IT solutions to Institutions and Corporates. His journey with L&D started in 1993 where he was engaged in training professionals in the field of Sales and Marketing. He then moved to Research and Development and was instrumental in bringing the first global corporate training organization into India. Following this he also introduced the mass deployment of Psychometric tools including DiSC and EQ based programmes into India as a result of a relationship with Carlson Learning Company based out of the US. Over the years Gautam established Learning & Development businesses through franchised operations in Sri Lanka as well as Oman and introduced many firsts into the country. Relationships with Microsoft saw the introduction of the Microsoft Sales Specialist Credential and the launch of the Microsoft Certified Trainer programmes. Large scale ‘facilitator led’ (non technology) business simulations were introduced by him through global relationships in the early part of the 2000’s. He also launched a unique learning methodology aimed at Senior Management that combined the merits of EQ and IQ based learning and was deployed using the principles of Leadership and Military Sciences. Gautam has always been ‘hands on’ as far as L&D solutions are concerned and has been a part of the entire framework of need identification, content creation, solution deployment and impact measurement with a number of corporations across the Indian sub-continent. He has been certified by organizations and Institutes across the globe including Huthwaite International, Center for Leadership Studies, ASTD and the Australian Institute of Management to name a few.
Stephen Jenner	Stephen Jenner is Deputy Head Corporate Training, based in Delhi. He began his English teaching career in 1995 and worked widely in Europe for five years, mostly in the corporate sector. In 2000 he went to Egypt and began training trainers and working on e-learning projects for the British Council. He has continued to develop his professional interest in teacher and trainer training and innovation in online education. He is currently working on a distance Masters Degree from the UK Open University in Open and Distance Learning. Stephen has delivered training projects and consultancy in India for HCL, Barclays, Intelenet Global Services, Watson Wyatt, Macquarie, Nokia Siemens Networks and Infosys. He has lived in India for over three years, in Chennai and Delhi.