Kumar Managalam urges RAW to be innovative in talent search

Innovate in locating talent. This was the tip Kumar Mangalam Birla had for the country’s external intelligence agency..

Innovate in locating talent. This was the tip Kumar Mangalam Birla had for the country’s external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), that has been facing a resource crunch. The Internet was a good example, the noted industrialist said on Friday, as he referred to the spy agency’s decision to use popular social networking site Facebook.com for recruiting people.

The CIA’s Facebook page provides an overview of what the agency is looking for in a recruit, along with a 30-second promotional YouTube video aimed at potential college-aged applicants. “As the recruiting pitch goes — If you are a Facebook member, — a career as a Government spook is only a click away,” the chairman of the Aditya Birla Group said while delivering the second R N Kaw Memorial lecture here.

Organisations needed to move beyond the conventional approaches when it came to tapping talent, he pointed out.

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Describing the “scramble for talent” as a worldwide phenomenon, he said India had the advantage of being in a demographic “sweet spot”. But it was not just about the number of people. “Rather, it’s about the quality and depth of talent. And that is where alarm bells are already ringing,” he said. He described the talent shortage in India as “severe”. “I would suppose that talent is even more critical for a super-specialised organisation such as the RAW,” Birla noted.

“Earlier an institution like RAW would perhaps focus on nations which were distinctly hostile. Today, the enemy could be anywhere. Conventional armies have been replaced by terrorist outfits and sophisticated organisational forms,” he noted.

Birla also favoured complete privatisation education in India to solve the acute talent crunch being faced by the government and corporates.

National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, and other top intelligence officials attended the lecture.