Did you know that the best job for a fresher is in a startup? Well, it is.
Did you know that the best job for a growing professional or someone who loves challenges, is in a startup? Well, it is.
One of the biggest problems that startups have is in hiring people. During the last OpenCoffeeClub meet that we had here in Chennai, this was pretty much the topic, and after all the questions and answers that were debated upon, and the discussion that goes on in the forum, we have been working on it. It is a very solvable problem, just needs the right partners in place to make it happen and Proto.in has just that – all the right partners you need.
There are essentially three elements, to this problem:
1. Students are not even aware that startups are an option.
2. Startups don’t have the medium to gather mass. Most of them require one or two people, compared to the 800 people that TCS requires. End result, no placement office is all that very keen on small numbers.
3. Students need training on development platforms that make sense for startups.
Point #3 is actually a very nice business proposition. Imagine a centre like Aptech or NIIT which trains people on Python, Ruby, AJAX etc, on project (read hands-on) mode. The business can possibly make money by developing projects for smaller clients, and the very projects could also serve as assignments for the students to practice and nurture their programming talents on. As long as the centre delivers quality programmers, the startups will keep pounding to have more human resources from them, and the cycle will go on.
When I spoke about this to someone, the first thing she mentioned was, get me a centre to do this in Chennai and lets work out a franchisee model to spawn this across to various cities. I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t work. It has all the necessary ingredients to make it work. NIIT and centres such as that, should definitely look into such options.
As for #1 and #2, I have been suggesting within the Open coffee club group in Chennai towards forming a group within the startup community so that they can be tackled. There is a large scale solution of this that we are working on, which we will be unveiling during Proto (in January) and will be on fullswing starting february.
Excited? You should be. The Ecosystem is one step closer to being efficient.
I will make a more elaborate post with all the fine details on this regard, as we draw closer to unveiling this. Hold your breathe for a month.
This Post is a re-post from the Author’s Blog.
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I think too much blame is put on the freshers from Indian colleges , especially techies/engineers, than they deserve. Engineers graduating today come from families which still remember the 80’s and to a lesser extent 70’s – times when lunch was 5 bucks a month on subsidy. So , when a software MNC provides five star quality food , its a winner all the way and no startup can compete with it on that front. Such issues appear to be minor but they are not.
Having said that, I do see more freshers taking risks these days especially students from the major IITs. But I think the inflection point will come when you see a big success, or a series of successes which make a few kids very rich. These should be rags to riches stories that students of NIT Surathkal can recite verbatim and can relate to. Why should he/she put everything (including personal life and career in most cases) at stake for what is essentially your idea? Ultimately, it has to be about money , either in present or obscenely in near future. I think its unwise trying to get good guys saying ” its more challenging”. There will always be more challenging jobs which pay much better and don’t have risk.
This is my (unfolding) story. I’m at a stage where I need more “hands on the keyboard” and luckily enough I have portions of a project that I can offload to my alma mater 4rth yr Comp. Science students. I’m eagerly waiting to see how that goes. Will update results of that on my blog.
p.s. – I’m sure these days many Comp. Sc. students are interested in working on ‘search’.
Well the story goes like this, whether we like it or not: Freshers that can get lucrative paying jobs in the hi-fi MNCs are NOT going to cow down and walk into a startup in this business. Not in any reasonable scale. I know about my college, NITK, a college that has more job offers for the best people than they can handle. Extremely employable people, so their risk of joining a startup should be low, since they can get a cushy job later anyhow, right? Wrong. About three of the crowd that attended an “entrepreneurship” panel discussion, of which I was a part, even wanted to join a startup straight after college.
Reasons abound but suffice it to say that if people join startups with a high paying job in hand, they are the exception rather than the norm. We can find them perhaps, but a generic solution to address all freshers is then absolutely useless. Attack the fringes instead. (“We have a fantastic death metal collection” types )
The other thing that appears to be a solution is to NOT hire the best, since they will be in demand, and get the next rung instead. That is a dead end. “A-level people” is what makes a startup happen.
To say “You haven’t even figured out a way to hire talent, and you actually expect to be “seriously funded†? ” is being myopic. If your “fundability” is based on the ability to hire freshers…that is fairly ridiculous. If your fresher hiring process (straight off college that is) does not have the word “moolah” associated with it, you are fooling yourself. Because they will get some knowledge and leave for the money. (Who knows the value of money more than a college grad that lived perhaps in a dingy hostel) It’s not a lot of money that will make them stay – but you have to have the pockets.
You can try getting a few freshers, teaching them the ropes and trying to motivate them to stay while you attempt to get funded. I wouldn’t go down that route at all, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. If you can’t see a way for them to make five lakhs a year within 12 months, (speaking bangalore rates) you’re going to lose them if they’re good.
If founders and “team” are important, I don’t see how “freshers” can do a phenomenal job here. Why are you hiring freshers? because they are cheaper? or because they’re not sullied with corporate slavery and therefore can think out of the box and do amazing things? If it’s the first, then they will leave for the money. If it’s the second, the money should not matter.
An interesting thing is what Joel (of joelonsoftware fame) has – small stints for college students in their office. They get the best students mid-term and hope that they will join when they graduate – good strategy, but which startup here will actually think a couple years in advance?
Job board out here: I have hooked up with a lot of people through this board, which hasn’t resulted in a hire (I started my own company, kinda invalidating my post but I’ve still met some very interesting people). I think job boards like Joels or 37 signals are very pertinent and will provide better hits than the standard job boards – and with a rent-a-coder type of site that has a job board, you can immediately associate a resume with the quality of work previously done, something unavailable to most job sites. It needs time but I think it will work.
“You can only do that if you’re seriously funded, but that is a solvable problem.”
You haven’t even figured out a way to hire talent, and you actually expect to be “seriously funded” ? 😛 Oh the irony of the indian ecosystem! 🙂
There are basically three things which are essentially the core of a startup and the bare minimum that one needs to have before they start hounding the venture capitalists or money.
Founders. Team. Market Validation.
If you dont even have this, lets not even throw the abuse on the investors saying they aren’t taking “risks”. In my vocabulary, its like asking a new born child to be given a marriage – almost an abomination.
What I meant with NIIT was that, since that chain of institutes are dying off, perhaps they can look into something like this. And they should be getting their projects from abroad or even from rent-a-coder, not from other startups.
Job boards alone don’t work. Want an example? Check out the job board in this very blog. I have yet to meet people who found their team mates via this site.
The only valid point you made, as i thought was “then to associate them with a job board that allows potential employers (incl. startups) to view the work done etc.”. That’s a nice way to keep track records. I think all IT professionals need something like this, given the sheer percentage of fraud resumes floating out there! 🙂
The NIIT model has huge challenges. In my last startup we used to get a lot of requests from training institutes to give them “small projects” or to let us have their students work in our office for their project work. Hasn’t quite worked for us, honestly, because either the quality of people wasn’t up to the mark, or the incentives were off (students don’t seem to care as much about quality and will not be around to fix bugs etc. after the job is done)
NIIT or a tech center will have a huge challenge delivering “small projects”. That kind of stuff is unsustainable even at a small scale, and to scale it across franchisees is impossible.
It may be better to set up a more structured approach, an e-lance or rentacoder style bidding approach to such small projects, with anyone able to bid for them including students. And then to associate them with a job board that allows potential employers (incl. startups) to view the work done etc.
With #1 and #2 it would be interesting to hear your idea. I’ve found entrepreneurship gaining in visibility at least in my alma mater (NIT Surathkal) but I also know that hiring people is going to be tough, because you compete with big salaries from big companies, or you deal with not-quite-the-most-qualified prospects. But this is one problem you can throw money at. Organise a programming competition (or what suits you) with a fat prize and offer the winner a job at your company, for a salary higher than anyone else can imagine. You can only do that if you’re seriously funded, but that is a solvable problem.