Are we short of HR professionals?

Are we short of ‘good’ HR Professionals?

I met a senior HR professional recently who confided that it took atleast six months if not more to close any open HR position. He said, “There is a shortage of good HR professionals”. I was shocked. More than shocked. With the brands in our country spewing out a multitude of bright eyed youngsters who seem to get placed in their pre-final semesters, how could this be true?

Let us look at different facets of this problem. There seems to be a distinct disconnect between possessing competencies and being effective! Does this demonstrate an inherent dichotomy? A competency can be understood as “with everything else being equal, the person with a competency performs better than one who doesn’t posses the competency”. On closer examination, one realizes that there isn’t a dichotomy. A position competency should be situational. Often in hurry to ‘implement’ a competency model, companies tend to ‘borrow’ competencies and behavioural indicators. This is something like wanting your kid to behave like your neighbour – despite your neighbour’s house being very different from yours! Ditto is the situation with business schools. True that there are generic competencies, but then, generic competencies are effective only when crossed and embedded in second level or higher competencies which are environment specific.

Many management schools seem to be churning out finished products giving attention to the generic competencies, not paying attention to what the customer (industry) wants! There has been one effort where the customer need centricity has seen to pay off rich dividends and that is in a reputed institute in Gurgaon which most audaciously picked the brains of the top HR professionals of the country, framed their curriculum and stood by it. If success were to be measured by placements, the first batch was lapped up in four hours flat, and, twice over!

It has been my own experience while conducting interviews that specific skills are sometimes missing among HR position aspirants. These include working knowledge of tools such as Excel as well as gaping holes in knowledge of rudimentary concepts. On the other hand there is no lack in the ability of aspirants to conceptualise and strategise! Jenelik as early as 1976 has described this phenomenon where students of management are made to get used to virtual power and decision making abilities in business schools. Thus, there is an urgent need to relook at whether enough attention is being given to those competencies that are required or it remains to be a behavioural indicator of bounded willpower on the part of the management schools!

With the industry clearly defining competencies required by HR professionals in frameworks such as COMPMOD of CII-NHRDN, it is now the turn of management schools and students of HR to come together and draw up an action plan to ensure the development of competencies that are required by the industry. Afterall it is the era of being responsive to customer needs which determines if one is at the table or on the table. Period.

S.Naga Siddharth