Built a 1000 People Company of Dropouts in 5 years
There are several issues related to young students and professionals that the planners and corporate sector collectively overlook. One of such factors is dropouts’ career development and growth from some of the toughest courses. No student enters a course with the objective of dropping out. However, a few curriculums are too complex for a student to pass. Hence, there are a large number of dropouts. With a success rate of less than 16%, the Chartered Accountancy course is one of the toughest exams in the country.
This means that there are more dropouts from the course than successful candidates. These students spend up to 3 years of internship, countless hours of classes, and efforts to crack the course. So many professionals miss out on passing by a whisker. Unfortunately, there are few opportunities available for such professionals, both from getting a job or having a professional degree.
This is where comes to rescue such aspirants. The organization was founded in 2016 by the Parikh brothers: Shalin (Shawn) and Valay. They started their journey from a home office in Ahmedabad, India. Both are qualified Chartered Accountants who know and understand the course’s vigor. They know the challenges that dropout professionals face, whether it is related to finding a relevant job or related to career progression. The founders also realize that there is a minor difference between the successful students and the dropouts. They acknowledge the level of diligence, preparation, and perseverance of the dropout students. Hence, a decision was made to incorporate these dropouts into the Entigrity team and the results are for everyone to see.
The ‘Entigrity’ Approach and Empathy for Dropouts
The organization has a natural empathy for dropouts for all valid reasons. Besides spending the best years of their lives pursuing a course, these aspirants invest a lot of energy in learning skills related to finance and accounting. Since the margin for error in the course is too small, the results do not sometimes justify the overall level of knowledge and skills an individual might have.
Shawn Parikh, Founder, CEO, Entigrity Solutions LLC believes that the skills and knowledge of an individual go beyond the mark sheets. He has been honored by CPA Practice Advisor with the Top 20 under 40 Influencer Award in 2020 and 2021 for ‘Helping the Accounting Profession with Advancement’. As he says, “Usually, you see in start-up founders and co-founders are dropouts but in Entigrity it’s different, founders aren’t but most of the team members are dropouts. You know what’s funny about the course, you have done a 3-year articleship which is as good as a full-time job, but you are still counted as fresher when you go to the job market. At Entigrity we value those three years of articleship and focus on the work ethics, knowledge, and motivation to confer productive outcomes. I have seen their dedication and motivation to bring the best to the table. Since they don’t have a degree, they always think of going an extra mile.”
Entigrity offers these dropouts an opportunity to earn better than industry standards and pay as per their professional experience and skills, and not on the basis of their degree. Since the pandemic outbreak, Entigrity has hired more than 700 professionals from their career dropouts.
Career Development Opportunities
Entigrity believes that getting a job is not the final achievement for the dropout. The company helps them by paying for them to pursue courses such as CPA (US equivalent of CA) and EA (tax qualification in the US). The overall outlook of the enterprise is pretty broad as the founders have made sure that the long-term career development of the employees is the priority for the organization.
Future looks promising
There are more than half a million dropout CAs in the market and Entigrity is setting an example before other employers to change their perception of this semi-qualified CA. Entigrity has aggressive recruitment plans and will be hiring 3000–4000 people in the next 3–4 years. The company will keep on empathizing with CA dropout recruitment to provide them progressive work opportunities.
Summing up
The existing stereotypes and perquisites that accounting, audit, and financial services firms have towards CA professionals are finally bro
ken by Entigrity. By building a successful working group of CA dropout professionals who now lack the skills or knowledge to meet the highest standards of financial services, Entigrity has been able to create new benchmarks in the industry.
Originally published at https://www.business-standard.com.