Bilinguals and Trilinguals

Wise words from the new head of Nasscom Debjani Ghosh about what the IT world needs today 

 “These new jobs are not about technical skills alone. The requirement is for bilinguals and trilinguals. You need a coder who is brilliant in communication, who has project management skills, who understands design, and is able to put it all together. Then, you need domain expertise,”

She is entirely right. Interestingly enough hiring managers tasked with finding such employees do not have the skills to understand the what makes up "bilinguals and trilinguals". They are still looking at people as a sum total of their work experience with a certain key-word density in the resume. The screening process is such that it definitely eliminates the best people for the job. 

An employer may do better looking at the reject pile of candidates than pursuing the ones that make the screening cut. Assessing the humane skills of a technologist and how that would translate into excellence at their job is not something hiring managers have the ability to do. As a result, the gap between what the job demands versus who is hired to deliver it grows exponentially, resulting in very poor outcomes for all concerned.