“It’s finding talent that’s the problem.” Sound familiar? The past two years have accelerated the job demands that were already presenting themselves in Traditional IT and Digital IT workforce.
What Ravature has leveraged is their “Talent as a Service” or TaaS.
CEO, Ashwin Bharath and his teams are finding, hiring, and developing technology talent for an organization’s specific requirements so talent can be successful contributors from day one.
Training over 19,000 software engineers in 55 technical disciplines and deploying them to blue-chip companies throughout the world, Ashwin had some inspiring perspectives on the tech hiring landscape and the opportunities available in the wake of COVID-19.
M.R. Rangaswami: Tell me a little about the tech talent landscape and why there is an opportunity for disruption?
Ashwin Bharath: This left the supply-side hiring constituents such as large enterprises and systems integrators scrambling for cover with an unprecedented wave of challenges. The talent supply ecosystem which had relied in the past on sourcing from staffing firms supplemented by training firms (primarily instructor and online learning) as well as the ones offering coding boot camps have fallen woefully short in addressing the magnitude of this challenge.
M.R: So, the reliance on staffing and training firms coupled with the shift to broad platforms left a huge opportunity for disruption or a new approach. Is this where your “Talent as a Service” model was born?
Ashwin: In short yes. The strength of a company is not on its power or size, but based on how quick they can pivot, react, and respond to market demands. Any CTO will tell you that technology provides that agility. So, growth and agility rely heavily on technology, but the company’s existing tech teams are ill-prepared to take on this demand. It is this heavy demand that is forcing companies to realize that it is impossible to solve their tech woes by themselves. That is why companies come to Revature, we understand this challenge better than anyone else and we help create a unique solution built just for them.
M.R.: What is that approach? What is Revature’s secret sauce?
Ashwin: We start by considering two factors:
1. First thing we do is to unbundle the current talent solutions that are in place. As we unbundle, we help the client realize that they must focus on solving both the Talent Acquisition and Talent Transformation problems. This process helps the client understand that attacking both Talent Acquisition and Talent Transformation is what is needed to solve their tech staffing challenges. Bottom line: we help the client to understand the value of hiring based on talent and not on skills.
2. Next, we emphasize the need to democratize opportunities. Democratizing means that we need to build a Talent Enablement Ecosystem or Talent as a Service – which we define as a self-sustaining habitat that allows the client to tap into a consistent talent development cycle. This TaaS gives our clients a plug and play participation model irrespective of size and scale.
M.R.: I heard you say “Don’t Hire for Skill, Hire for Talent” can you unpack that a bit?
Ashwin: Well, this is really the “secret sauce” that you mentioned before. At Revature, we believe that the real problem with tech hiring is not a skill gap but an opportunity gap. “Skill” in technology changes at the speed of light and where most organizations get into trouble is that they hire based on skillset. That approach is basically just kicking the can down the road and leaves you vulnerable in the future.
Revature thinks about the problem differently, while traditional hiring focuses on the “skill gap” issue. We focus on opportunity creation and diversity. The idea that there is a lack of talent is not true, there is plenty of talent out there, but the traditional hiring approaches are too focused on skillset to take advantage of it.
Considering these facts, the Fed Reserve Bank of NY states that 40% of recent graduates are underemployed and over 50 million Americans are stuck in low wage jobs, without any prospect of acquiring skills that will get them better jobs.
The quantity of potential talent included in these group are staggering, tapping into these groups is one of the answers to the supply problem. And that is the advantage of working with us at Revature, our Hire, Train, Deploy model hires for talent and delivers the skill. Revature hires based on the potential of a candidate, not on their current skills. In other words, we don’t find talent, we create it.
M.R. Rangaswami is the Co-Founder Sandhill.com