Re-defining Skilling and Assessment Systems

Workforce ‘assessments’ and ‘upskilling’, perhaps work as flip sides of the same coin for corporate progressions. These terms have widened to salvage diversity within corporates and to some extent, the Learning & Development (L&D) scope provided by companies is no longer an optional menu. It is in fact seen as one of the key tools for gender empowerment at work. Corporate Citizen spoke to Sujatha Kumaraswamy, VP Operations MeritTrac Services Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru. In a dual capacity as VP Strategy and Diversity Champion Manipal Beyond Gender at MaGE (Manipal Global Education Services), she follows ‘the partnership’ model at work and at home. She is grateful to have juggled and balanced her life, thanks to her supportive network for the past 20 years. She daunts women to not play the ‘victim’ card in their quest to climb the leadership rungs in organizations. With recently published data claiming that over 59% of over 300 companies run women-centric L&D programmes. Sujatha shares her thoughts on long term remedies to stymie the ‘leaking pipeline’ of mid-level corporate women who succumb to life events of marriage, motherhood or elder-care. She hopes ‘inclusivity’ to transcend beyond gender stereotypes and ‘employability’ to embrace personality types and problem-solving attitude within the diverse and ever-transitioning corporate landscape

“Behavioural and Psychometrics kind of assessments have been there forever but there is definitely a rapid increase in usage of them and very interestingly, we are even seeing it in segments beyond corporates. We, therefore, do a lot of work with educational institutions and the government sector too”, said Sujatha Kumaraswamy, VP - Operations MeritTrac and VP-Strategy and Diversity Champion - Manipal Beyond Gender at MaGE (Manipal Global Education Services). MeritTrac, a 100% subsidiary of the Manipal Group, is a private testing and assessment company, and the first Indian full member of the US Association of Test Publishers.

Sujatha pinpoints on the growing focus around employability that is beyond the domains of professional qualification and domain strength alone. “It is also about your communication skill, the ability to work in a team, and problem-solving skills,” she added.

With the rapid change in talent management zeroing in on assessments, Sujatha is at the forefront of delivering such tools and juggles three very different portfolios under the Manipal Global Education Services’ mantle.

Optimising Bandwidths

In her two and a half years with the organization, her primary scope has been to handle sales in the government sector and the internal Manipal Business Sales for assessments and similar product portfolio. “It (MeritTrac) is a group company so we service a lot of group companies and my role in this is purely into sales across India,” she added.

However, about 20-25% of her bandwidth functions as the head of the sales portfolio, around 40-45% on Operations and Strategy and around 25-30% on driving Education Leadership.

“In the government sector, we do a lot of work with different Central as well as State Government to deliver assessments. We involve with state governments, right from the designing of the question paper to processing off the final list of candidates with end-to-end accountability. Obviously, the Govt. will always hire and our growth potential here is a sizeable part of our portfolio,” she said.

“As regards strategy portfolio, there is a charter to transform the education group (services) and here we are looking at fixing product gaps, strengthening our technology and building in a lot more core services and becoming a much more knowledge organization beyond what we are today”, said Sujatha.

Despite her multiple roles, she enjoys strategizing the most. “This aspect stays in your career and you would like to sort of engage in more thinking work and innovate a lot more ideas. With so much happening in the Edutech space, we have to leverage and I definitely love this aspect of my job profile,” she said.

Denoting Employability

Almost all corporates hinge on their assessments of behavioural traits, personality-types and fitment for employability, but a new momentum has transcended across ranks for cohesive corporate progress. “In the past, these used to be extensively applied for very senior level management, but such assessments are conducted across a person’s career lifecycle and it is likely to increase for all levels”, she said.

They work around two interventions with corporate houses. “The first is at the hiring stage, where we work with corporates to manage their hiring assessments. This can come in many shapes and forms, on or off-campus, walk-in drives, remote proctored assessments et.al, as part of our fleet of products. We also work with corporates on their L&D outcomes. It is for existing employees and forms the second track of our corporate portfolio,” she said.

She explains that the assessments on offer provide the first level assessment for any organization which can help give out pointers. “These pointers given to you indicate the areas that need to be worked on as an individual and then you can further reassess”, she said.

In the education sector, the company works with a number of universities and colleges where they provide assessments for entrance exams, for the recruitment of non-teaching staff. Their full-fledged digital evaluation product, TracMarks, enable universities to automate their exam management lifecycles through solutions that they offer to these institutions. They also provide specialized employability assessments for university students around coding, behavioural traits etc. which is dependent on the university’s requirement.

“We also work with central and state govt. body for their hiring requirements. We undertake end to end projects, right from requirement understanding in terms of positions to be filled in a particular role, to mapping it to the domains that need to be tested. Thereby, build a test construct around it, right till releasing of the candidate list,” she adds.

“Today, a new age company won’t say that because you have an IIT degree, I will hire you or will not, if you are not from a premier institution. While it is still the trend, we are witnessing a shift happening that says that if you prove your competency to me, I will hire”

Re-defining Corporate Meritocracy

The positive trend has been for a large number of corporates to sift candidates on ‘pure’ merit irrespective of learning institutions. “Today, a new age company won’t say that because you have an IIT degree, I will hire you or will not, if you are not from a premier institution. While it is still the trend, we are witnessing a shift happening that says, if you prove your competency to me, I will hire. Our kids will have to deal with that kind of a job market,” she said.

Sujatha acknowledged that while there will still be companies that will cherish a Harvard MBA. “But it will not be that if you don’t have a premium degree, you will not get a committed or a coveted job. It is so much self-driven today”, she says.

L&D Trendsetters

Transitioning into the new environment at work, the nature of orientation leads to expectations which did not matter much in the past. However, “Broadly in the whole learning and exam space, there are some emerging key trends such as Digitisation, Agility, On-Demand and personalized learning, the tools etc.,” she said.

“We work with a number of universities and get into tenders where the shift is in moving away from pen and paper-based exams to a computer-based one. Evaluation is getting digitized and we are not there yet. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will come into some basic levels of evaluation based on algorithms that are given. This is, however, a while away from India but very clearly that’s a trend and continues to grow across the country, even to places like J&K”, she added.

On the aspect of Agility, Sujatha believes in the timeliness of project deliveries and that there cannot be an excuse for delays in deliverables. “Today, when you respond to a proposal or a customer requirement, you cannot say I will need three months to build a solution for you, which is unacceptable. Therefore, the pace at which one needs to respond to meet the requirement is rapidly changing and people also expect flexibility in the product being offered.”

On-demand is a buzz word that has caught up in the L&D space too. Sujatha explains that even for exams like GMAT, candidates are seeking to book an exam slot not merely based on their time convenience but also the test centre, include taking an online test. “Such demands can be extended to a solution where there is a remote proxy and I will take the exam at home. The query here is, why can’t you offer me a remote proctoring solution in an airport, home, etc. I will take the exam, you asses my credibility index and give me a score,” she said.

On-demand learning is the other trend these days which dictates the candidates’ pace and the choice of environment to get tested. “Expecting people to all gather and sit in one classroom and take one test involves ‘time’ as an important quotient to testing and learning which is shifting too”, she said.

“Candidates do not want one standardized test. Clients say that they want their own personalized learning path and assessment that is defined for them rather than just one ‘cookie- cutter’ kind of an approach. These are rapid trendsetters in the learning space today and everyone is trying to match up to these trends...”, she added.

Affordability Quotient

Sujatha believes that much of the learning is free today and on-demand learning is not merely restricted to the privileged class.“You go into any city, even Tier III ones, all you need is connectivity and a computer system, and nothing stops you from learning German or Mandarin or anything else”, she adds.

I still believe that this is a transition across demographics and maybe it has started with the upper-middle and middle class where there is a certain level of privilege which can rapidly go across. However, we also see our maids’ kids who are very aspirational these days and the need is to support and feed into that aspiration”, she said.

On meritocracy and authenticated learning platforms, “While everyone has access to all these technologies, the need is to curate a curriculum for learning which is updated and attuned to building competency at all levels of learning”, she said.

“I have to stay ahead of the game, keep upskilling/reskilling. Today, I personally don’t understand AI or machine learning. But, I know that three years down the line, as a business leader, I am going to have to have a fairly deeper understanding of the usage of AI in the areas that I am working”

Border-less Assessments

MeritTrac’s international portfolio engages with international exam body to deliver assessments in India, as exclusive partners for test administration for agencies such as ACT and similar exam systems. “We as such, also do marking outsourcing, wherein these are not very high-end interventions but work around basic areas of English, Maths and maybe a little bit of Science for junior level kind of answer scripts. We have a pool of evaluators that could do the marking in India and send off the result to the customers is one of our unique propositions,” she said.

Their fourth segment involves digital evaluation support from India. “Here, we could render for international exams or any other assessment that can be remotely delivered like a certification exam or a test prep that are to be conducted remotely from here, whereby our platform and content is used”, she adds.

Empowering Women and All

“Women in their careers start-off almost at an equal or even a higher percentage of women are extremely well-skilled for a particular job role at the entry-level. However, six-seven years later, while things are still pretty good, conditions are still the same, irrespective of what gender you belong to-comes life-events like marriage, kids, perhaps relocation…Unfortunately, from an Indian society context, it is largely the women who are having to take a back seat”, she said.

She acknowledges that while the funnel gets shorter and shorter for women all the way up to the leadership rung, some corrective measures by way of opportunities and thought processing is slowly reinstating the corporate path for women for longer innings.

Assess personal situations whether to stay or quit: Realize what you desire work wise, five years down the line and to achieve this, understand the consequences and effort needed to hold a day job and also handling the home front.

Adopt a continuous learning process at work and be ready to upskill for a second chance: “I have to stay ahead of the game, keep upskilling/ reskilling. Today, I personally don’t understand AI or machine learning. But, I know that three years down the line or probably sooner than that, as a business leader, I am going to have to have a fairly deeper understanding of the usage of AI in the areas that I am working. So, I have to keep learning and it is a thought and an idea applicable across genders,” said Sujatha.

Prioritise list of career-based Achievables: Women need to find time to upgrade.

“Successful leaders and I, myself have done it. I have built that system so that you have 30% additional capacity. On the home-front, have that one extra maid and it’s a good investment. You will at least have a plan B and a plan C. You are not having to take a call of quitting or slowing down because you don’t have the bandwidth in the system”, she adds.

Building it Young

“My biggest advice to young couples who are looking to start a family is to please invest and build a good network for support ahead of time so that you can count on the network to support when you need it the most, you cannot do it alone,” she said.

Future Plans

Sujatha’s goals sync in with her company’s goals to add a lot more IT into MeritTrac’s learning domains in becoming a knowledge centre and a content-centric organization.