In the first of the series of interviews, Ramanujam Sridhar, Advisory Board Member of Talentnow and CEO, Brand-comm speaks to Dr. Vivek Mansingh, Country Manager, Dell R & D about what makes Dell a compelling place to work.

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RS: Today you are competing for talent from different companies. So what makes Dell an employee’s choice?

VM: I think a number of things like great work environment, opportunity to work on leading edge technology & products, competitive compensation, but what stands out from the candidate’s perspective; is the focus on their development.

Our people are our most valuable resource. The amount of focus we give to their development , whether its through training , through mentoring, teaching on the job, giving them stretched and challenging assignments , teaching them technology or leading product designs; that’s is the most important investment we make in our people.

Another thing, Dell is a $60+ billion company in 24 years. It is one of the most, if not the most successful company if you measure by revenue per year growth perspective in the history of capitalism. You don’t get to be the no.1 company in the history by accident. So, there is a lot to learn from such a successful company and its leaders.

RS: Having got the talent, how do you motivate them? How do you retain them?

VM: The number one reason for someone to leave a company is when she/he is not learning on the job. There could be other factors such as salary, work environment etc. But generally in India , I have seen that people leave when they can’t learn on the job and they don’t see a growth path for themselves. We invest to make sure that employees are learning and growing on the job. It could be through training, coaching, mentoring and stretched assignments. About half of our managers have grown internally.

We also have a very strong culture of mentoring. I have personally mentored people in Dell in US and Taiwan . Our leaders are mentored not just from India, but from our global pool of mentors . We have programs where we assess our employee’s strengths and gaps, and based on the assessment, we choose a mentor from anywhere in the world in Dell who will help them fill the gaps. These are the things that motivate people and give them an opportunity to learn.

Motivation for engineers is also letting them work on good technology and then making sure that the technology gets used. The products they design are actually released in the global market, do well in the market, earn lots of revenue. So they see that all their work is bearing fruit. That motivates.

We also nurture leadership skill in people through our leadership training modules, leadership talks. We have a leadership series where Dell leaders from all over the world come and spend time with our young leaders. So there is tremendous learning opportunity.

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