The BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) industry has been growing at a scorching pace in India. These days, new BFSI products and services hit the Indian market at the same time they hit the global market. With most of the BFSI products and services in the industry having been thrown open to foreign investors as well, this is not surprising. With so much happening so soon, staffing issues cropped up and caught the BFSI industry unawares. The industry had no alternative but to scrape the bottom of the barrel for competent staff as a stopgap measure. The industry hoped that the new crop of young management graduates emerging out of management colleges affiliated to the various universities of the country would help mitigate the staffing issues. To its chagrin the industry realised that the management graduates were not job ready. The industry had to invest its valuable resources like time, energy and money to ensure that the management graduates were job ready. In the circumstances, it is necessary to get to the root of the problem so a set of solutions to address the skill gap the industry finds in the management graduates can be devised. Towards this end, the researcher interacted with two major stakeholder categories associated with the BFSI industry, namely, BFSI experts and BFSI controlling officers. The interaction led the researcher to conclude, inter alia, that the management colleges should involve the BFSI industry while framing the syllabus for the management courses . They should review the syllabus at annual intervals and update it, by roping in the services of the BFSI industry. The management colleges and the management graduates should interact with the BFSI industry executives periodically to update themselves on what is trending in the industry.

chagrin; competent; scorching; scrape; staffing; stopgap; trending; update