The outreach initiatives, launched as an essential part of its regional business strategy, are targeted towards potential employees both within and outside the industry.
Notable among these, is ‘Starting Over’, a lateral recruiting initiative that taps into a highly talented pool of mid-career women seeking to restart their careers at Mahindra Satyam after having taken a break for personal reasons.
The selection procedure for ‘Starting Over’ is as per the corporate norms, although candidates are evaluated based on their potential rather than just their previous experience. Various training programmes are also provided for them to re-orient them to corporate processes.
“Women make a significant part of the tech workforce today and ‘Starting Over’ is novel way of honing that talent base effectively. ‘Starting Over’ nurtures talent right from the initial application stage and ensures opportunities to all candidates by offering three employment avenues: internship, part or full time. In this way we ensure that all candidates are optimally employed.” said Suresh Samudrala, Head HR, Asia Pacific, Mahindra Satyam.
“My experience from the beginning with the ‘Starting Over’ team has been good. They have been helpful in boosting our confidence by holding seminars and conducting workshops. I am happy to be part of this organisation. Mahindra Satyam is the first company that I have come across to have started something like Starting Over for women like us - who want to restart their careers,” said Madhavi Lakkaraju, who has been successfully re-employed by the company as a part of the starting over initiative.
Another innovative talent development goal that the Indian IT major has achieved is more than 55% localisation of its employee base in every country outside India that the company operates in.
Towards this very objective, in a first for the company’s Singapore-based regional headquarters, Mahindra Satyam has tied up with the island country’s premier university, NUS , and other prominent universities to recruit soon-to-be engineering graduates. All recruits, almost all of whom are Singaporean citizens and PRs, will be trained for 3 months at the company’s Hyderabad (India) and Cyberjaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ) global delivery campuses, post which, they are expected to be deployed as full-time project staff on “live” implementations across Asia Pacific.
“The response from NUS has been overwhelming and we are very impressed with the caliber of applicants. We have successfully implemented this in many other countries including neighboring Malaysia and it has worked very well”, said Suresh Samudrala, Head HR, Asia Pacific, Mahindra Satyam. “Talent retention is almost as challenging as talent acquisition in our industry and if we don’t think out-of the box, our growth will be seriously impeded,” added Suresh.
In order to grow existing talent, Mahindra Satyam regularly conducts extensive people development programmes, both at leadership and delivery staff levels. Among these, a pioneering initiative has been the ‘Shadow Board’, which is a quasi board of mid-manager level employees, all of whom under 35 years of age. They advise the senior leadership on new industry trends, new technologies and evolving corporate practices.
“Technological trends today are evolving too fast for traditional boards and senior leadership that is usually over 60 years of age to keep track of. The ‘Shadow Board’ has worked very well for us and has been behind many of the new practices we have evolved such as social media,” said Suresh Samudrala, Head HR, Asia Pacific, Mahindra Satyam.
Constantly raising the bar for its internal talent development practices has enabled Mahindra Satyam to attract prominent senior leadership as well. Over the past X months, more than five senior management appointments have been made across different countries.
“Mahindra Satyam is fast developing a reputation for being one of the most coveted employers in the industry and we are pleased with that mantle,” concluded Suresh.
Mahindra Satyam is the brand name of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. a leading global consulting and IT services provider.
About Mahindra Satyam
Mahindra Satyam is a leading global business and information technology services company that leverages deep industry and functional expertise, leading technology practices, and an advanced, global delivery model to help clients transform their highest-value business processes and improve their business performance.
The company's professionals excel in enterprise solutions, supply chain management, client relationship management, business intelligence, business process quality, engineering and product lifecycle management, and infrastructure services, among other key capabilities.
Mahindra Satyam is part of the $11.1 billion Mahindra Group, a global industrial federation of companies and one of the top 10 business houses based in India. The Group’s interests span automotive products, aviation, components, farm equipment, financial services, hospitality, information technology, logistics, real estate and retail.
Mahindra Satyam IMS is a leader in offering innovative and transformational infrastructure services to enterprises helping them build and manage their IT infrastructure more efficiently and effectively.
