Everybody in the corporate world believes that to win they need to have the best of talent with them. Every company thrives to attract the best people into their fold, they try to strike ‘the day zero' at the campus to shoot offer letters to the best of the available talent. Every CXO spends hours from their busy schedule choosing and retaining the best people.

After acquiring such great talent, most companies follow a bell curve, wherein about 5-6 per cent of their employees are rated as their ‘top talent' followed by another 8-10 per cent as their ‘second best.' They differentiate the ‘good' with the ‘better', and then the ‘better' with the ‘best'. A differential treatment is then offered to this 14-15 per cent ‘top talent', programmes are drawn to pamper them so that they remain in the organisation for a long period and deliver to their potential best.

In a nutshell, today most of the companies try and recruit from the best of the institutes and then choose the top few from this group of chosen employees to run their business.

With the economy growing, there is growth across industries. The meaning of industry is no more limited to manufacturing, service sector progressing even at a faster pace. Enough studies show that supply-demand situation will change over time and there may be acute shortage of the desired talent in India as well as globally. Global companies are also scouting for the best brains from India to be placed for their global requirement. The current youth no longer talks about unemployment; instead they speak about which company or Industry to choose. There is no doubt that things have changed in last two decades and today our country needs more trained manpower, more talent.

Let us take engineering or MBA as a case in point. Many years back, the aspirants knew it well that there are only few engineering colleges in the country, and many students would to aspire for the same seat. These colleges also ensured that the entrance tests are really tough and they only select the best from many bright students. Thus in the past, it was a limited number of people who used to get into engineering or MBA, and it was okay… since the industry demands for new talents were also limited.

But things have changed since then. Industry now needs more engineers or MBAs. This demand explosion has thus led to explosion in education institutes in the country. The way engineering and MBA colleges are mushrooming in India; the current generations have enough opportunity to pursue their dreams, to be what they want to be. Hence, today it is not that only the top few percentiles of the students have the coveted degree; many more possesses the desired education in comparison to the past.

But then, what is the issue? The issue is that most of the corporate are habituated to live on a ‘top talent' and ‘top institute' culture. And the reality over time the industry will have lesser new joinees from the best known proven colleges as the outflow from the newly developed colleges will outnumber the entrants from IITs or IIMs.

The fact is that we need to build the right team with talented people for us to be successful but then are these talents who are not from IITs and IIMs bad? There is a huge opportunity in this new wave. The good part is these set of aspirants know that they are academically not so brilliant; some even know that they are mediocre, and have failed to get into the best engineering college or the MBA College. But the best part is they too want to grow and reach the top. The hunger to succeed pushes them to work hard, challenge their counterparts from the best institutes shoulder to shoulder. Hence, in the long run, chances of them to succeed may remain even higher.

There will be enough confusion and chaos since it is a paradigm shift that we are heading for, conventional way of nurturing the top talent may not work for ever. We need to learn to foster people at the middle of the bell curve, guide and develop them to become our next generation leaders. The middle of the bell curve should be given enough opportunity to do grow themselves and do their best. The corporate world should identify the knowledge, skill or the attitude gaps that these aspirants have, help them to mitigate the gap and adapt to its needs. It should help them learn by guiding them through the practicality of day to day life.

They are the people who may be running the show tomorrow.

The author Partha Sarathi Basu is director AkzoNobel India