The mobility of skilled workers
Last night, Ravi my friend in India sent me an interesting newspaper article about the story of a young Indian girl named Simral that I wanted to share with you.
“Simral Chaudhary graduated from a top Indian university, she had valuable skills and working experience during a summer internship at a global company. The opportunity was available to her and other students because, the business, universities and the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India formed a public-private partnership during the India Economic Summit, to help prepare students for careers and establish international recognition of skills.”
“Since Simral wanted to have a career outside of her country, she contacted The Global Talent Agency to have her skills assessed and certified against global standards. The test revealed that her skills were on par with graduates of European universities. The Global Talent Agency helped Simral identify where her skills were in high demand. Based on this information, she applied for a job in a German company specialized in healthcare research. She was offered a job, left India, go to Germany, and ready to work where she applied her skills to the new job.”
“The collaboration among countries, businesses, universities have created a global workforce of professionals, allowing Simral and other skilled graduates to develop their full potential for the benefit of business and economies. Companies are now able to hire the talent they need to create innovation and growth. Countries can benefit from reducing unemployment and receive a specific amount of money their skilled workers send home. In this fast-changing world, The Global Talent Agency helped supply the market quickly with skills in high demand by working to align education curricula of the local schools with the global market needs that, among others benefits, lowered unemployment in a country. The agency gathered information about labor supply and demand globally, regionally and within certain industries. it has allowed an individual from one country to easily find a job in another. More broadly, it has helped to fill skills gaps and foster talent mobility. Skilled individuals in one country can now find work in other countries easily. The Global Talent Agency ‘s database has created a global human capital market by forecasting skills in demand and work with universities to improve their curricula and enabled mobile skilled workers to work in many countries.”
After reading the article, I was impressed so I called Ravi. He explained: “Even India needs a lot of skilled workers but except the information technology industry which is already well established, others are still slow in their development. Simral graduated in Biotechnology and wants to work in healthcare research but there is only limited work that can use her skills. However, there is a huge need in European countries and that is where she could contribute by working overseas. By having a mobile workforce where skilled people can go to work in a place that can use their talents, we can solve two problems at once. We can reduce unemployment in one country and support the growth of another. In the future, skilled workers will not stay idle in one place but move around to where they can be best utilized.”
I asked: “But how can India do that? Ravi explained: “We know the global market well, we know which countries need which skills and work closely with our universities to make sure that our graduates have the skills that the global market needs. We do a lot of benchmarking of our training with others to make sure our graduates have the same skills as compared with others. Our government also support the mobility of our talents. We have a public-private partnership between the universities and the Ministry of Human Resource Development to support this type of work. We are working closely with many countries to send our graduates to work there instead of keeping them here but not utilize their talents. You probably see that in every country, there are many skilled Indian professionals working there.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
