LSE Group launches graduate recruitment with SLIIT

Lankan IT expats keen to return:

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) aims to become a major employer in Sri Lanka in the future by offering high-end IT jobs for the best talent in the industry. The group is in the process of setting up the new headquarters of the Business Services Division at the Expert City precincts.

The Colombo project has made significant progress since it was first announced in May, according to LSEG's Executive Director of Exchanges Technology, Duminda Liyanwela. "We have made significant progress on multiple fronts and we progress with our original plan to launch the project in November," he said in an interview.

LSEG's new Business Services Division in Sri Lanka will provide support to the Group's operating entities across the globe. The venture will provide the best and brightest technology talent in the country, the opportunity to be a part of an ever expanding, innovative knowledge hub.

The new LSEG facility will directly employ 400 people in high-technology jobs, and an additional 1,200 indirectly. These employees will be tasked with providing technical support services that are central to the Group's global network. LSEG's investment and recruitment drive in Sri Lanka will also provide an immediate boost to the IT sector of the country.

Liyanwela, who is based in London, was in Colombo recently to check on the progress of the project when the Business Observer met him for an interview. "So far we have recruited 100 qualified and bright young people of Sri Lanka. We have also started a graduate recruitment program with Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT).

"The first batch of 35 young people from SLIIT will join LSEG in October," he said. They will speed up the recruitment process over the next two months to reach the 250 mark. There is keen interest in LSEG jobs and the recruitment team has seen a lot of responses from Sri Lankan expatriates in Australia and the UK for these jobs.

The reason for starting the graduate recruitment program with SLIIT, he said, is that SLIIT and LSEG have a great match when it comes to young talent, knowledge and training.

"We can easily train SLIIT graduates to fit into our professions. At the same time we also believe this is one way of contributing to the island's education field as well," Liyanwela said. "We would like all our employees to stay with the group forever, but the reality is that it is not going to happen."

"From a business point of view, to continue our centre in Colombo, and it to be viable and profitable, we need to hire exceptionally good people in the future. It is not feasible for us to go to the market to pick talent, every time we need people.

"When we set up a 'graduate hiring program' with the best IT institutions and the universities in Sri Lanka, we can continue to run our recruitment process without any issue. We need to ensure the sustainability of the project. Therefore, we would like to hire 50-60 graduates each year through the graduate program and train them on our jobs.

"We will soon be engaging in discussions with several universities in terms of expansion of our graduate recruitment program," Liyanwela said.

LSEG is already a major partner with Sri Lanka's IT sector through Colombo-based Millennium IT which is a subsidiary of LSEG. "Our existing relationship with Sri Lanka is quite strong and we continue to expand our presence while introducing capital market skills to Sri Lanka. We hope with our increased presence in Sri Lanka we will become a significant employer in the country.

"Ideally we would like to be one of the top employers in terms of the skills that we hire. We are not just offering jobs for young people. We offer careers with great prospects; it will be an exciting opportunity for Lankan youth to join a highly reputed global organization," he said.

LSEG is expanding as a capital market infrastructure company. "The Colombo project enables us to expand our geographical footprint. On the other hand Sri Lanka needs capital market skills - which we will introduce through the new project.

We hope that this project will further elevate Sri Lanka's image as a knowledge-based country."

Talking on the initial operational work of the project, Liyanwela said the 26,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Colombo reaffirms their commitment to the technology sector of Sri Lanka. "We've been supported by officials of the government and other institutions. In terms of the property and logistics we couldn't be happier. We deliberately selected the location having considered city development projects such as Megapolis."

As a group LSEG has ambitious growth plans in terms of market capitalization and business expansion. Sri Lanka is part of that plan now.

"The headquarters in Sri Lanka will play a key role in that growth plan from a technology and business operations perspective.

Other than technology skills, we would be in the business operations skills, accountancy skills and HR skills; all those other functions that enable a group of our nature to operate globally and to achieve our strategic objectives. This demand can be serviced from Sri Lanka in the future."

- CJ