Keep it up CodeVita

I am simply amazed to see the expansion of CodeVita all across India. It is truly a talent search platform that is fair, scalable, and very very competitive. In the many years that I spent at TCS, I came to two major conclusions when it came to talent:

• College marksheets do not necessarily reflect practical aptitude to excel
• Resumes are often misleading, while searching for relevant talent

Let me delve on these points. I have seen many people with BCom, BSc, BE, and BTech degrees and with very average marksheets excelling in coding, scripting, setup and administration. What would take weeks for many of us with MS and PhD degrees, would be done in a matter of a few hours and days by these experts. While there is no denying that an MS or PhD education sharpens your analytic skills, being an underdog gives you the experience to combat any challenge without fear. On the other hand college toppers carry the burden of expectation that they need to excel wherever they go, which is not really justified.

Coming to the second point about resumes. Even today I see such greatly written resumes that I feel tempted to immediately call the candidate for interview. It beats me how people have mastered the art of creating facades. The reality is that for select positions we land up sifting through hundreds of resumes, calling dozens of people for interview, and land up choosing only one. If I correlate the winners with their resumes, I usually find that their resumes were modest and never made a show of what they did not know.

So what have these two conclusions got to do with CodeVita. The problem that we face in the IT industry is how to select the best person for a given job, given that lakhs of candidates are available through college hiring or lateral hiring. What is really required is a fair, repeatable, scalable, and extremely competitive platform to choose the best candidates. While marksheets and resumes can be used as additional criteria, it doesn't make sense to use them as the only filters during the selection process. 

I would like to encourage more and more college students to participate in CodeVita. It not only depicts your practical talent but also shows you where you really stand, and thereby goads you to work harder on your skills. I am waiting for the day when I see this becoming a platform for all practical IT skills across not only students but also professionals. There is no dearth of talent in India, and we need the right kind of platforms to bring out the talent.

Kudos to the TCS team led by Amol Khanapurkar for conceptualizing and implementing CodeVita. The progression from simple problem solving to gamification is an interesting twist that should surely make this year's CodeVita very very exciting. Amol and team are doing a terrific job and I wish them all the best!