The words 'global economy' are on everyone's lips today. From aggressively successful entrepreneurs and steel magnates to bio-techies and event management experts, everyone's talking about expanding their businesses across continents.

Increasingly open economies and decreasing governmental controls are allowing companies to break geographical barriers. After the fall of the socialist economies, a new world order is emerging, which is a heady mixture of laissez-faire capitalism and controlled socialism. Countries are vying with each other for a slice of the economic pie, as old fears and knee-jerk protectionism disappears behind a haze of prosperity.

The lifting of governmental controls may have helped unleash the power of a global economic order, but the engine of prosperity has to be fuelled by the most important ingredient—human resources. Recognising the need for a well-qualified and highly talented workforce, countries across the world are investing in education and skill development. New engineering schools and large universities are being set up, and collaborative efforts across educational institutes are being encouraged. Increasing investments in higher education and greater emphasis on high-quality primary education will power the biggest success stories in the next decade or two.

As more and more well-educated and well-equipped talent emerges, the task of talent selection becomes even more complex. Companies find it increasingly difficult to identify and zero in on the right candidate for the right job. The onerous task of hiring the best will become more and more difficult; the situation will be exacerbated by the requirement of greater numbers of people 'on-the-job'.

Choices before learners
Traditional, time-tested avenues of employment making way for newer opportunities and career paths, and today, most students are faced with a bewildering array of choices—of colleges, study subjects, fields of specialisation and methodologies. Students are faced with the unenviable task of having to make choices based on popular opinions or trends. Very few, if any, make choices based on potential and real aptitude. This means that finally, most new entrants in the professional field are there because they hope that they are in the right place and not necessarily because that is what they like and are good at doing. Identifying one's own potential and true métier is, therefore, based on experience as well as trial and error.

Apart from this, we will find that with newer seats of higher education opening up across the world, the task of getting oneself noticed by potential employers becomes more difficult. Highlighting one's abilities and hidden or unique strengths becomes even more crucial in the race to stand out from the crowd. Graduates from institutes located in unusual geographies will be hit even harder, with a new class structure based on one's graduating institute rather than one's merit emerging. Both companies and job-seekers lose in the ensuing chaos. As companies resort to greater eliminatory tactics, they run the risk of letting real talent slip through the employment net.

Finally, out of the chaos will emerge order. In a truly global economy, talent seekers from across the world will capture talent from across the world. In a truly global economy, there will exist a single, definitive benchmark, providing a standard methodology to recognise the quality of the human resource. In a truly global economy, external trappings will not matter, what will matter is potential and aptitude. In a truly global economy, the ability to contribute to a global business will be crucial as geographical boundaries to hiring get blurred. In a truly global economy, the playing field will be flat and level, providing opportunity to all, based on true merit.

The new order
The emergence of such a new order has already begun. Companies are feeling the need for global standards to benchmark human resources, and academics are encouraging the use of merit-based candidate selection systems. India's position as a lead contributor to the global IT human resources pool will need to be supported by the adoption of global standards for talent selection.

It is out of this need that a council of companies, hiring experts, technology experts, psychologists, government agencies and test development experts came together and set up the Professional Aptitude Council. With a charter to develop and administer global, industry-standard examinations on behalf of the IT Industry, PAC helps test skills and aptitude to make a highly predictive assessment of a person's ability to perform in an IT job within a global business setting.