With US Bureau of Labor statistics indicating that the average university graduate will change jobs 11 times by age 38 in this century, corporate, technical and other training is big business

In today’s fast-paced world, in which new technologies — and entire industries — become rapidly obsolete, all professionals, technicians and workers need to constantly improve and upgrade, and often learn completely new skill-sets. US Bureau of Labor statistics indicate that the average university graduate will change jobs 11 times by age 38 in this century. Little wonder that within Indian industry — especially in new age industries such as telecom, finance, banking, insurance, outsourced operations, engineering design, R&D, manufacturing — corporate training is big business, and training, counseling and consultancy are becoming rewarding careers.

Excellent communication — written and verbal — adaptability and inter-personal people management skills are the prerequisites of a career in training. As for academic qualifications, a non-technical trainer should be a graduate preferably with postgraduate specialisation in HR (human resources) and training, while a technical trainer should be a computer science or engineering graduate. Several certificate programmes — both Indian and international — are available for specialisation. For instance, the Delhi-based Indian Society for Training and Development (ISTD), a non-profit society, offers a diploma in training and development. Apart from this, business management programmes with specialisation in human resource management, offer training as a subject.

In particular, the continuous growth of the IT-enabled services sector offers a plethora of career options for would-be training professionals. Specialisation options include customer service, telemarketing, technical support, domain specific and voice and accent training. An individual with technical competencies and good communication skills is well-qualified to become a technical trainer, for whom there is pressing demand in the software, hardware, automobile, and manufacturing, among other sectors.

Since trainers help business enterprises improve organisation and employee productivity, they are very much in demand. Today, even the call centre industry offers numerous opportunities in training and often outsources productivity improvement assignments to training organisations and freelance trainers with requisite qualifications. The competition in HR and training is intense, but so is the potential for business.

“The HRD (human resource development) and training industry is growing rapidly with training companies mushrooming countrywide. Most of them comprise individual professionals who have morphed into trainers in their domain areas. Moreover with the services sector contributing 55 percent of GDP, this sector of the economy is multiplying rapidly and compensation is comparable with the best in industry,” says Nandan Savnal, managing director of PeopleSys Pvt. Ltd, a well-reputed consulting and training company with “hundreds of clients” on its roster including HDFC, ACCOR group (owners of Novotel, Sofitel, Pullman, Mercure, Ibis), Johnson & Johnson etc.

A commerce graduate of Mumbai’s well-known R.A. Podar College and a qualified chartered accountant, Savnal began his career in 1988 in the investment banking division of Standard Chartered Bank. But as he became increasingly aware of the importance of HRD and training to create continuously learning and high productivity business organisations, in 1992 he went solo promoting a firm styled Quality Management Systems to develop human capital specifically for the IT and finance industries. Three years later, he founded a full-fledged consulting and training firm named G.S. Savnal and Associates, which morphed into PeopleSys in 2011 with offices in Mumbai and Pune and very soon in Delhi, Muscat and Bangalore.

“Peoplesys is focused on two major domains — one is process excellence and risk management where we offer ISO certified management training relating to information security, business continuity and risk management. Our second focus area is learning and development — assisting client companies to develop leadership pipelines through training workshops at all corporate levels, and executive development including specific coaching assignments. I don’t like the word training, specially in the context of developing senior managers and corporate leaders. For them we offer facilitation services to connect them with latest trends and developments in management, and assist them to assimilate those in their areas of work. As the market evolves, corporate leadership training will grow in importance,” predicts Savnal.

To attain these objectives, Savnal also ensures that he keeps abreast with new trends and practices in human resource development. A professional coach certified by Results Coaching Systems, Australia, in 1997 he pressed to acquire certification from the National Federation of Neuro Linguistic Programming, USA and completed their three level — practitioners, masters and trainers — programme. He is also a qualified auditor and visiting faculty at ISO 27001 and BS 25999.

According to Savnal, training is an ideal career option for individuals passionate about people and developing human capital. “But as in any other career, to succeed one needs to keep learning continuously as clients’ needs keep changing,” he says.

Indra Gidwani (Mumbai)