‘Campus connect’: An Infosys program to develop India’s information technology ecosystem

• Main Authors: DE MEYER, Arnoud, WILLIAMSON, Peter, JOSHI, Havovi, DULA, Christopher
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Infosys; Information Technology Consulting; ITC; Ecosystems; Partnerships; Industry-Academia; Learning and Development; Training and Development; education; Campus Connect; Talent Development; Talent Pipeline; sustainable partnerships; Talent Management; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Human Resources Management; Strategic Management Policy; Technology and Innovation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cases_coll_all/56; https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/case/3381
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This case is set in April 2013, and discusses the key elements that have contributed to the success of Infosys Ltd’s Campus Connect Program (CC) in developing India’s IT talent over the past eight years. The CC programme had been developed by Infosys in response to a growing belief among India’s IT industry majors that the large number of fresh graduates they were looking to recruit from engineering colleges were neither readily employable nor sufficiently industry-ready. The programme was envisaged to address this problem through an industry-academia initiative that would architect the education experience of engineering students. The goal was to build a sustainable partnership with engineering education institutions for mutual benefit, producing high quality talent for the IT industry. This would be carried out through a range of programme components that Infosys would collaborate on and develop with academic institutions. The programme was launched in May 2004 with 70 colleges. By December 2012, the model had been sufficiently scaled up to cover 400 colleges, and more than 180,000 students and 8,300 faculty members across India had benefited from the programme’s technical and soft-skills training, and exposure to industry practices. Since CC’s launch, Infosys had experienced a measurable improvement in the quantity and quality of their new recruits. The benefit was truly significant given that over this period of time, the number of graduates recruited had multiplied from around 8,000 recruits in 2006, to over 20,000 recruits in 2012. Infosys had understood the value of creating a talent ecosystem, and this case explains just how, and why, Campus Connect has worked as a successful example of industry-academia partnership in the talent management space.