India and China are traditionally the best markets for sourcing for most IT requirements, However other countries are not lagging behind – Philippines, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and other countries are also vying for their smaller share. Come to near-shoring the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Honduras, Columbia are propping up with creating good infrastructure with readily available English speaking graduates and enticing providers albeit concentrating on call center initially.

There are challenges in hiring from the major markets which are undoubtedly India and China. Contrary to popular belief there is not a huge pool of talented resources that can hit the ground running. The employable pool is actually less than 25% of the available resource pool which his large no doubt. Though both countries produce thousands of graduates every year, they are not truly ready when they walk into their first assignment. Except for some of the top universities many of the private colleges have dismal infrastructure and resources to give the graduates the education they need to be successful once hired. Some of them are like paper mills churning out graduates.

The tendency to hire big numbers from universities bringing in resources that come without any formal training has been an issue that has had several consequences. The bigger firms found this trend early on and invested very heavily on training facilities to quickly train them and move them to billable fold. Some of the training facilities are truly world class, this was fueled by the need to fill the bigger numbers of resources that are needed to fulfill large contracts and keep a bench strength needed to provide a quick response when needed.

The need for large numbers to fill meant IT providers had the upper hand and could put resources that were semi qualified. For clients it meant hidden cost since the efficiencies were not the same.

Here is your check list if you are looking at resourcing :

Don’t settle to just fill the numbers, look for talent you need.
Don’t compromise on your skillset and experience requirements,
If needed the training or re-training, that should come at the providers cost not yours.
Never offer training on technology available in the market at your cost except on legacy or niche technologies not available in the market.
Extend the non-billable time till the resources become efficient enough.
Have a screening policy for onboarding new resources.
Drop resources that don’t fit your needs as you know, don’t keep them on your rolls.
Put checks and balances to review output.
Don’t allow low productivity resources to stay on large teams go un-noticed and bill you out.
Get a upper hand on resource approvals, don’t allow your IT provider to dictate terms.