Short Selling the IT Industry way

In today's market there is a huge demand for specialists and the IT industry tries to address this in a very "shoot yourself in the foot" way.

Usually, it starts with request/opportunity coming from one of the clients, that they require people with so and so capabilities/skills (let's call that skill X) with so much of years of experience.

The vendor's Pre-Sales force comes into action, pitches to the client with the proposal showcasing the capabilities of the company, how they are growing, their expertise in the technology "X" and how they have so many people working in the "X" technology.


The client is very impressed and asks for the profiles of the people who can be engaged for the assignment.

Now comes the problem. Pre-Sales team have done what is called Short Selling. Trying to sell when they have no inventory or people available on the bench with the skills. All in the hopes that if they are able to engage the client, they can do one or more of the following

• Try to engage somebody from the market ( a la contractor)
• Try training somebody in the company ( usually not possible within the short time frame

and the last resort

• Fudge the resume of an existing person and make him an expert on the technology "X"

Usually the vendor is unable to hire people because people with "X" demands very high and if he does not get selected then you do want to be saddled with him. Next option is to train or fudge the resume. In both case, when the client interview's the person, the person is found lacking and in the end the whole client experience is shattered with the vendor. The client becomes wary of the vendor and on the whole, damaging the entire relationship.

My Qs, is Short Selling the right way.

We all do some sort of short selling in our lives. Claiming to be able to do things, which we never ever have done.