“We Are Looking At 75-100 New Hires In The Next Two Years”

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Ecolibrium Energy helps enterprises embrace the digital era with easily implementable IoT and AI-based solutions. The company follows a unique process of identifying candidates who align with its core values.

In an exclusive interview with EFY bureau, Sugato Guha, President – Sales & Operations at Ecolibrium, talks about the challenges in finding quality talent in IoT space, how to bridge industry-academia gap, key skill sets the company looks for in hires, Ecolibrium’s unique hiring practice and more. Excerpts follow..

Q. Is ‘quality talent’ a challenge that IoT players are going to face in India?

A: Yes, when it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT), the business community is still trying to overcome a significant skills gap. The IoT is moving from proof-of-concept (PoC) to reality. The number of IoT start-ups have grown 10-fold during the 2014-18 period. Therefore, sourcing quality talent that fulfills the required skill set is a crucial challenge that many IoT players are already facing. We are working with more than 300 companies in India and looking for projects for expansion. We also need to hire talent that can match the skills required.

Q. What would be your advice to professionals working in electronics or IT sector and eyeing a role in the IoT space? Should they prepare themselves for making a switch? How?

A: It is crucial to understand the basic concepts of IoT really well. Professionals must have the ability to connect the dots learned during their academics since very few institutes offer a curriculum dedicated to this. The trick is to think data stream and its use cases along the way.
Besides, it is important to stay focused on the quality and context of information. IoT uses diverse technologies under one roof – and is prone to insertion of errors and biases in the dataset. The efficiency of IoT solution depends on clean and actionable data.

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Q. What steps can academic institutions take to bridge the industry-academia gap for the IoT sector?

A: IoT is about connected factories and smart buildings. Understanding the applications and designing new ones require industry practitioners to effectively explain the nuances. Internships and live projects will go a long way in helping students.

Q. Are you hiring or planning to hire talent for your IoT business? If yes, can you share estimated numbers to be hired within the next 2 years?

A: Yes, we are hiring. We are looking at 75-100 new hires in the next two years.

Q. If yes, what are the type of roles for which you’re planning to hire? Can you share a brief idea about what these roles entail?

A: We have an array of roles for the candidates we are currently hiring or plan to hire. We are looking for business development professionals, highly seasoned technical staff – full stack, technical architect and interns.

Q. Any key technology skill sets that you’re seeking amongst the would-be hires?

A: We are looking for professionals who are proficient in Python, Java, ReactJS, Bootstrap, PostgreSQL and Time Series Database (InfluxDB), WebAPI, RESTAPI and framework (Spring and Django), as well as technologies like Redis and RabbitMQ.
In addition, machine learning (ML) algorithms and experience using the various ML techniques will be a big advantage.

Q. Do you have a formal internship program to train freshers for the industry? If yes, can you share how’s it designed to actually make them industry-ready?

A: We offer excellent internship programs for students, who wish to undertake projects in IoT. We have also tied up with various reputed institutes to provide training to students. The students are expected to undergo a thorough project training in a department of their choice to ensure that they have equal contribution to our business with their involvement. Through our internship programs, we provide two to six months of training.

Q. Can any student apply for your internship program? If yes, how? If not, how do you select your interns?

A: Students can apply through their college’s summer internship programs or directly through our website.
Those who are on the verge of completing their engineering can also apply. They can send their internship/job applications at [email protected].

Q. Any unique hiring practice followed by your firm – to get the right candidates?

A: Apart from the ‘must-have’ skill sets for the given role, we also follow a process of identifying candidates who align with our core values, which are – Excellence, Humility, Collaboration, Accountability, and Flexibility.
We constantly focus on keeping our value needle in place and hence the above process is of utmost importance to us while sourcing the right candidates.