Developing Industry-Ready Human Resources in India: A Socio-Technical Dimension of Competitiveness

Developing industry-ready human resources (HRs) is a big challenge for India in the prevailing socio-technical system. At the cross-roads of competitive business practices, Indian industries demand huge job openings; whereas, the young Indian professionals have less or no jobs. This is the outcome of a mismatch between the demand and supply of HRs of the HR development (HRD) centres with respect to the industry. A sustainable business model for developing HRs to leverage employable people to the market is described in this paper. The purpose of the paper is to propagate design thinking amongst the practicing managers, professionals, academicians, researchers, students and the society at large. The careful design of HRD process eliminates all types of mismatches, suitably capturing the voice of the industries, for a better ‘fit for use’ or quality. The paper is based on the concepts of ‘product design and development’. Further, it is generalised through a case study, based on the secondary data obtained from different company websites, in the test bed of the Golden Triangle of Odisha under the tourism industry. The results, collaboratively derived from the practices and literature, look very promising. The recommendations being agreeable to both the supply and demand sides, yield confidence for the harmless implementation of the model in any industry.