Accenture to rely on its Careerverse to attract talent to Advanced Technology Centre in Malaysia

• Bold target of hiring 2k Malaysian tech talent, amidst global shortage
• Accenture Malaysia first to roll out such a career fair within Accenture

A month ago, Accenture Malaysia announced the establishment of the Advanced Technology Centre in Malaysia (ATCM) with the aggressive target of hiring over 2,000 tech executives in the next few years. This compares to its plan to hire around 1,000 talent for its Thailand centre that it announced in Nov 2021. Thailand’s population is just under 70 million or 2.1 times larger than Malaysia’s 33 million.

Accenture paints the hiring target as representing a major step in supporting Malaysia’s digital economy blueprint, MyDigital, introduced in Feb 2021, with the aim of creating 500,000 jobs in the digital economy.

Azwan Baharuddin (pic), country managing director said, “We are confident the Accenture Advanced Technology Centre in Malaysia will contribute to the country's key growth priorities by training and activating local technology talent.”

With its priority on cloud, analytics, Intelligent Platform Services, Security and AI technologies, Azwan believes this affords talent at the ATCM an exciting opportunity to apply and deepen their skills through their work for local and global clients. His lofty goal is for the ATCM to become, no less than “Southeast Asia’s powerhouse of technology.”

But first he has to attract the talent, and Accenture Malaysia, despite being a Tier 1 employer, is not known to be a magnet for top tech talent, notes an ivy league educated software architect running a consultancy in Kuala Lumpur.

Focusing on locals when tech talent is seeing its strongest demand yet

Be that as it may, Azwan and Accenture Malaysia have a bigger challenge. The pandemic has shown even more clearly that tech talent and many tech roles to be both global and mobile, and paradoxically, keyboard and connectivity bound rather than by physicality. You could be working for Azwan, sitting on a beach, in Zanzibar Island. You just need your trusty laptop and a solid 4G mobile service. Fixed broadband would be a bonus.

But then, you could also decide that it would be more fun earning in US currency, from that same beach. Online ads touting full time, high paying, software jobs in the US, abound with the added allure – No visa, No suitcase needed.

Despite this new reality of tech work, Accenture Malaysia and Azwan have given themselves a bigger challenge than just hiring over 2,000 technically competent talent for the ATCM.

They want to hire Malaysian talent, as far as possible. That means they have to not just compete aggressively but also spread their recruitment dragnet far and wide, into every nook and cranny in Malaysia if they can. Just waiting in a 5-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur during a career fair or even embarking on a major cities/university recruitment tour, is not going to cut it anymore.

With necessity being the mother of invention, what Accenture has done is to flip the recruitment model. Instead of hoping candidates want to join its ATCM and filtering the applicants down to those it deems are good enough for consideration with an invite to the face to face or video interview, it is relying on the metaverse to show candidates the cool and exciting careers and work they can be a part of at Accenture Malaysia. This includes meeting and talking to existing Accenture staff as well, to get a sense of the actual work and company culture.

Enter the Accenture Careerverse

“We are going to where the talent is,” declared Azwan at a briefing on Monday about the Accenture Careerverse that it officially launched today, April 22. “Think of it as a sort of The Matrix meets Ready Player One,” he quips.

Offering a more prosaic view, Ramakrishnan C. N, managing director and Head of Entropia Extended Reality, describes the Careerverse as a future window into what career fairs will likely look and feel like, with Accenture Malaysia determined to lead the way.

Developed by Entropia Extended Reality, a Malaysian creative and digital agency that Accenture acquired in June 2021, the current Careerverse is designed to be a browser-based ‘light’ and easily accessible web VR experience without the need for a US$400 (RM1,715) immersive experience VR set or the need for strong connectivity as a threshold.

The second version will be built with higher personalisation which includes visitors using their own avatars but for now, “We don’t want it to be too heavy to ensure a smooth user experience,” said Azwan.

As if to emphasise the importance for such an approach, Azwan himself had connectivity issues with lag interfering during his comments.

The objective now is for talent sitting in Bario, Sarawak, or sitting in a café at KLCC, to a recently graduated student back home in Kuala Trengganu helping her father sort the daily catch by the beach, to all have as smooth an experience in the Accenture Careerverse.

Despite the hype around the metaverse and Accenture’s bullishness over the impact it will have in the business world, Ramakrishnan points out that the building blocks are still taking shape and “Should coalesce over the next 10 years for greater business use.”

That rising demand from business will mean more roles for the technologists building out those future metaverse worlds. Anticipating this demand, Accenture Malaysia is hoping its Careerverse will attract the right talent to it from which Azwan can try to fill the over 2,000 roles at the ATCM.

“Talent participating in the Accenture Careerverse, will get a glimpse of the work that awaits them, and the skills development journey tailored to their specialisations. These include providing learning milestones from their very first month with us, and beyond, leading to specific technology certifications,” said Nicole Lee (pic), managing director, Accenture Malaysia’s Technology Lead.

It’s a bold attempt by Accenture Malaysia and it’s also the first such attempt by Accenture globally, says Azwan who is not touting the fact, being more focused on ensuring it delivers the right impact to the talent pool he aims to attract to the ATCM. Bragging rights can come later.

Technology talent can register for the Accenture Careerverse here.