Day 8
The second company of the day was an extreme contrast from the first. This visit was at a company with over 145,000 employees worldwide. Those in Pune work and essentially live on their "campus" that most closely resembles a big Silicon Valley tech company. They began in Pune and have since expanded worldwide doing consulting, business IT, engineering, BPO, cloud, and mobile services for over 600 clients. They truly appear to be the leader in IT in India and I think much of that stems from their global delivery model from the 1980's which they said was an interruption in the industry that made offshore outsourcing the thing to do. It was the idea to figure out where and how different types of work would be better...be it onsite, near shore, or offshore. After the presentation, we were given a tour of their campus made up of numerous office and conference buildings, a library, cafes, a supermarket, a clothing store, gym, racquetball courts, an outdoor pool, etc. You name it, they probably have it. Since the campus is so large, the company has bikes everywhere so that anyone can jump on one, take it to the opposite end of campus, and park it for someone else to use.
Day 9
Our final corporate visit was an exciting one--we had a few presentations scheduled, lunch, a campus tour, and then our Marquette student group had the opportunity to give a presentation to a big group of their "freshers." This company started out in 1980 and is headquartered in Troy, Michigan. They have a global headcount of over 17,000 employees that is rapidly growing (they only had 8,300 employees in 2008!). They have 19 sales offices and 3 campuses in India. The beautiful campus in Pune takes up nearly 77-acres of land along a river with mountains in the distance. Upon our arrival, everyone was extremely welcoming. We were greeted in a traditional Indian manner receiving a red bindi mark on the forehead, rice tossed above us, incense was lit, and we were each given a flower. They also had our professors and some of the students light a ring of candles using the same lit candle to signify our welcome. Between the campus, greetings, and presentations, this was my favorite company on the trip. As a business, they deliver custom IT and knowledge process solutions to a variety of clients. 56% of their client focus is in the financial industry (doing things like mobile banking), 13% insurance, 17% healthcare, and the remainder in retail, logistics, and manufacturing. When a group of employees are working on a project, they are not just focused on the technical skills for the project but are also encouraged to understand the domain they are working in. What I thought set them apart from other companies is their philosophy to really focus on the customer and having that client for life...and going off of that, they put a lot of effort into keeping their employees for life. They kept stressing the point that they are, "small enough to listen but big enough to deliver." The second presentation was about their HR practices where we heard their 5 core values (that could be seen all around campus); simple, smart, speed, stretch, and synergy. These values are the basis for their employee reviews and performance.
Being such a large and growing company, their hiring process is complex. In this past year alone, they received 300,000 applications, narrowed that down to 110,000 to test, and finally hired 5,000 individuals. It sounds like an outrageous number of initial applicants--but that's what they want. Rather than limiting themselves to on campus scouting, they use websites like monster.com to recruit more people. From that round of 110,000, they are tested first on language and communication skills, then put into group discussions to go over a topic together, then the best move onto individual interviews, and are finally tested on technical skills. Another interesting aspect of their HR practices is their performance management process. Project managers will rate employees using a table that compares an individuals score for each of the 5 core values compared to their performance on a project. All of these scores are public info among the company and used as a way to track what people do and eventually used for internal promotions.
The presentation we gave to their freshers was another great experience. We spoke to a group of about 30 people in a conference room which was nice because it made it easier for us to interact with everyone. We focused on talking about U.S. business culture, the differences compared to what we have learned and experienced compared to Indian business culture, and then we went through some scenarios that would be common experiences in the BPO industry. With nearly 3 hours to cover material, it actually flew by. We were all a little worried that their group wouldn't be very interactive as we learned that Indians tend to be shy when it comes to participation, but they proved us wrong so it was a great learning experience for both groups.
Our final corporate visit was an exciting one--we had a few presentations scheduled, lunch, a campus tour, and then our Marquette student group had the opportunity to give a presentation to a big group of their "freshers." This company started out in 1980 and is headquartered in Troy, Michigan. They have a global headcount of over 17,000 employees that is rapidly growing (they only had 8,300 employees in 2008!). They have 19 sales offices and 3 campuses in India. The beautiful campus in Pune takes up nearly 77-acres of land along a river with mountains in the distance. Upon our arrival, everyone was extremely welcoming. We were greeted in a traditional Indian manner receiving a red bindi mark on the forehead, rice tossed above us, incense was lit, and we were each given a flower. They also had our professors and some of the students light a ring of candles using the same lit candle to signify our welcome. Between the campus, greetings, and presentations, this was my favorite company on the trip. As a business, they deliver custom IT and knowledge process solutions to a variety of clients. 56% of their client focus is in the financial industry (doing things like mobile banking), 13% insurance, 17% healthcare, and the remainder in retail, logistics, and manufacturing. When a group of employees are working on a project, they are not just focused on the technical skills for the project but are also encouraged to understand the domain they are working in. What I thought set them apart from other companies is their philosophy to really focus on the customer and having that client for life...and going off of that, they put a lot of effort into keeping their employees for life. They kept stressing the point that they are, "small enough to listen but big enough to deliver." The second presentation was about their HR practices where we heard their 5 core values (that could be seen all around campus); simple, smart, speed, stretch, and synergy. These values are the basis for their employee reviews and performance.
Being such a large and growing company, their hiring process is complex. In this past year alone, they received 300,000 applications, narrowed that down to 110,000 to test, and finally hired 5,000 individuals. It sounds like an outrageous number of initial applicants--but that's what they want. Rather than limiting themselves to on campus scouting, they use websites like monster.com to recruit more people. From that round of 110,000, they are tested first on language and communication skills, then put into group discussions to go over a topic together, then the best move onto individual interviews, and are finally tested on technical skills. Another interesting aspect of their HR practices is their performance management process. Project managers will rate employees using a table that compares an individuals score for each of the 5 core values compared to their performance on a project. All of these scores are public info among the company and used as a way to track what people do and eventually used for internal promotions.
The presentation we gave to their freshers was another great experience. We spoke to a group of about 30 people in a conference room which was nice because it made it easier for us to interact with everyone. We focused on talking about U.S. business culture, the differences compared to what we have learned and experienced compared to Indian business culture, and then we went through some scenarios that would be common experiences in the BPO industry. With nearly 3 hours to cover material, it actually flew by. We were all a little worried that their group wouldn't be very interactive as we learned that Indians tend to be shy when it comes to participation, but they proved us wrong so it was a great learning experience for both groups.
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