TV Mohandas Pai, Ex-CFO Infosys has stated in an interview that having just one degree is not enough in the coming age of competition. According to him, in the coming years, companies will start to hire based on specialisation and dual degrees. Apparently, the students with just a graduation degree in engineering will not be able to sustain themselves in the coming years.
Mohandas Pai was speaking to PTI for an interview. He further stated that to remain sustainable in the future times, candidates will need to updated with the latest trends in technology and coding. He emphasised on the importance of learning coding and advised the students to go for masters degrees and sharpen their coding skills by taking classes out of the curriculum. According to him, the companies will change their trend of hiring on the basis of specialisation and coding skills in the coming times.
According to MD Pai, gone are the days when companies used to pick raw candidates and train them for months before assigning them a project. The increased competition in the coming years will provide a lot of ready talent to the companies and these expenses will have to be cut down. With the specialised hirings, companies can save a lot of their training expenses.
To have a job in the future, candidates will need to have some level of expertise in coding. Also, candidates with more than one specialisation will be preferred because of the increased competition and lesser demand due to automation.
Talking of the trend in Indian IT industry right now, MD Pai said that the average package for freshers used to be ₹2.25 lakhs a few years ago and that has increased to ₹3.5 lakhs currently. That shows the ongoing trend in the IT industry. While being asked about the increasing unemployment in India, he commented that India has over a million engineers coming out every year and no economy in the world can make full use of this number. India has a capacity of employing 1.5-2 lakh IT engineers every year and in such a scenario, it becomes important to have specialisation to remain competitive.
He rubbished the claims that Indian IT industry is going towards a downfall with the increased layoffs. According to him, the companies ask their non-performing candidates to go out every year and that is a part of the normal procedure.