Madan Padaki, Co- founder & Director, MeritTrac Services, who sees skill sets of service personnel as a critical component of BFSI, says even a single grade shortfall in skill rankings could mean substantial loss of potential sales opportunities and repeat business! He shares his views with B.V.Shiva Shankar in an interview. Excerpts:

CIOL: MeritTrac is into Skill Assessment from quite a long time now, which are the verticals that are on a recruitment spree? Has MeritTrac put together a customized Skill Assessment tool for these verticals?
Madan Padaki: MeritTrac's team studies the latest recruitment trends across industry verticals & develops assessment solutions to meet the needs of these industries. Retail, BFSI, Manufacturing are just a few such industries that we can name where MeritTrac has developed tailor-made solutions of the various job roles that are being hired for with the guidance of subject matter experts from the industry.

While domain expertise is one aspect of efficient evaluation, the other side involves the possession of functional skills. Many of the front end functions, especially in an industry like BFSI require aptitude towards sales and customer orientation. These skills might seem hard to evaluate but thorough research by MeritTrac on job roles, customer expectations and psychology has managed to break down these skills on understandable parameters, which can be mapped through assessments. Specialized functional tests have been developed by MeritTrac's team to evaluate not just aptitude to these functions but also level of proficiency in these functions.

CIOL: The verticals like BFSI need specific domain knowledge to asses the required skills. Would MeritTrac's Skill Assessment tool evaluate candidates only on soft skills or also test their domain knowledge?
MP: Domain knowledge is an essential part of any vertical with businesses getting specialized. MeritTrac's testing model has always been based on thorough research of industries and job roles within an industry to map level of proficiency required. MeritTrac's suites of tests are thus aligned to the testing requirements of a particular industry and domain parameters are an essential part of this testing requirement.

Tests are developed in constant interaction with Subject Matter Experts (SME's), which makes them relevant and customized to an industry specifically on domain parameters. Even in specialized industries like BFSI this model helps MeritTrac develop specialized tests and in a position to create new tests as per requirements.
But just research with a base of SME's does not translate into valid assessments. It requires expertise in the science of testing along with proprietary frameworks, understanding of job roles and test customization to make an assessment valid and reliable.