Components of Individual Talent Management Industry

This is a first-cut description of what such an industry looks like. The height denotes relative maturity of the market in India, even though most of these markets are fairly fragmented.

Let’s briefly describe each of these:

• Formal Education Systems: This is one of the most important and pervasive component of this industry. Right from schooling system for upto Class XII, to universities that impart undergrad and post-grad courses, this has the most profound influence on the individual and how he/she is going to progress in his/her career. Sadly, this is also the least evolved component, with issues ranging from lack of awareness about industry needs, lack of personalized attention, lack of resources and trained personnels, to players having short-term goals of making money rather than making careers.
• Placement Services: This is an important portion of industry, where there are thousands of players, offering various types of services to get someone a good job. However, most of the time, this means forwarding resumes to lots of employers and letting employers do the heavy lifting of sorting resumes to find appropriate candidates, interview them for suitability, etc. Again, demand for skilled individuals is so high that employers are willing to put up with such mediocre services and this component plays an important role of broker between labor and demand.
• Training Services: This is probably the most prolific component of the industry, which aims (claims) to provide just-in-time, targeted training to enable their customers get good job and be successful in their career. Again, in spite of such abundance, quality and measurement of quality is sorely lacking, so even though you will find lots of hoardings about “learn C# in 14 days and 1400 rupees”, you will not be able to figure out which is the most effective course for me. However, since the demand exists, most of these players make good money by staying small and focused in one geography.
• Career Counseling Services: This is the least developed of all the components, and by a good margin. If you try to look for such services around you, most providers provide online question/answers, and a large set of information about colleges/jobs available. Real counselors do exist, but again they are very specific to a certain geography and certain area of expertise.

Overall, I think these segments need to mature and evolve much more if they want to really influence the supply of skilled  employees that the employers need today for various sectors of economy that are growing right now (IT, pharma, some parts of manufacturing, finance, etc).

As always, your comments are most welcome on this industry partitioning and on my commentary on state of affairs in each of them.