Software product start-ups facing talent crunch at entry level

With start-ups emerging by the day and innovative products created by the minute, software product engineering has now become one of the most sought-after career options in the country.

The reasons are many. To begin with, India is at the nascent stage of software product innovation cycle and has the potential to reach $100 billion in this segment by the end of 2015. The number of software product firms in the country too has multiplied enormously over the decade from just about a 100 in 2000 to nearly 2,400 now.

However, Indian software product start-ups are experiencing talent crunch at the entry level. Retaining talent beyond one cycle of product development has become quiet challenging for organisations. This is a growing concern for the industry as growth of the sector is directly proportional to the availability of the right talent.

When companies hire freshers for their product development opportunities, they look for a few things. First and foremost is a candidate's logical and conceptual clarity. Second, they would look at how a concept can be applied in a real-life scenario to solve issues. All the rest comes after this. There are some candidates who have a natural flair for product development, while others have to work hard to attain these skills.

The scope of software and application development is not limited to just writing and compiling code. The complete lifecycle can involve many phases, whether it is developing for the desktop or for mobile devices. Typically a cycle starts with modelling and designing and continues all the way through testing, quality control, and product launch.

It takes some understanding to differentiate between a career in IT and a career in software product engineering. While it is good to see student's chase software product engineering as a preferred career option, many still land here because of some destiny. Either ways, once they start their career in product engineering, they know they are in for a long and an interesting haul.

Software product engineers should be able to consistently execute welldefined engineering process that integrates all the software development activities to produce high quality software products. Software product industry is on the lookout for professionals with the right mix of technical skills and business acumen. Indian engineers possess strong technical skills but the same cannot be said about their exposure to business and markets. Of late colleges and universities are taking special efforts in making students aware about the distinction between product engineering and a regular IT engineering.

It is essential for the educational institutions to provide students with hands on experience with the most up-to-date, collaborative environment, tools and have a thorough understanding of the flow of work. We have a good number of educational institutions today that are closely associated with large and small corporate houses for the benefit of their students. Building or engineering a product requires a different skill set and thought process. Hence the learning curve associated with it is immense.

Right from understanding customer needs and requirements to conceptualising and creating a product, and later on thinking like a user in terms of its scalability and robustness, the challenges are many. Software product engineers realise that when they build a product, it is a bigger responsibility because they need to think like users and build it, unlike standard application development where they think like software developers. This very thought process brings in a different perspective altogether, which is essential for a successful software product engineer.