Do you know that approx. 18 Lac Engineering students pass out
each year in India?
And do you know that a shocking 80% of them are unemployable?? ...
...If this is the plight of engineering graduates, one
shudders to think of what arts/commerce/science graduates could be going
through..! While there are scores of reasons to explain above anomaly
(mass-copy/cheating at exam. centers/fake degree certificates, distracted
students to lack of teaching faculty/infrastructure/falling standards of
teaching, lesser jobs at entry level so on and so forth), the article is for
that average student who is honest, keen to get his first job and aspires to get
ahead in life..!
Let’s first be clear on some concepts.
Employability is not simply getting a job; neither is it a list of skills that can be ‘taught’!
Employability is on-going success for now and in future,
whatever career a student chooses.
Employability is leveraging a range of skills, abilities
and attributes that are developed in a whole range of settings and that vary from
individual to individual.
The classic definition of Employability is - “It is a set of achievements –
skills, understandings and personal attributes – that make graduates more
likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which
benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”.
To further expound employability -
·
It is the ability to gain initial employment
(For the same, the interest in ensuring that ‘key competencies’, careers advice
and an understanding about the world of work should be embedded in the
education system)
·
The ability to maintain employment and make
‘transitions’, changes between jobs and roles within the same organization to
meet new job requirements or
·
The ability to obtain new employment in another
organization if required.
·
An ongoing developmental process that benefits
from active reflection
Considering the rising cost of education, Educational
Institutes should strive to provide a good return on investment to
students. They need to be engaging in the educational process, rather engaging
in the whole student experience. Innovative teaching, learning and assessment
methods help students engage in the education process and have the added
benefit of also helping them to develop attributes which make them attractive
to potential employers. Students’ interest is more likely to be maintained if
they can see the relevance of their studies to their future careers and life
beyond university.
Students who make an effort to fully participate in the
total student experience (academic, co-curricular, extra-curricular, including
work experience) benefit from a well-rounded education, contribute fully to the
life of the University and community and hopefully have fun in the process. Involving employers in the education
experience, for example, through case studies, delivery of guest lectures, can
help students appreciate the relevance of their course and learn how to apply
theory and knowledge in practical ways in the workplace.
Developed by Pool & Sewell and
based on a range of employability models and theories, the CareerEDGE model provides a useful summary of five essential elements that aid
students' employability:
Career Development Learning – the
knowledge, skills and experience to help students manage and develop their
careers.
Experience – work and life experiences help students develop a
broader range of skills and are attractive for prospective employers. (How
seriously have you taken internship? What have you observed/learnt at the work
place?)
Degree subject knowledge, understanding & skills – Do you know the fundamentals of the stream
you chose for graduation? Do you love at least one subject passionately out of the
40 subjects you would have studied in 4 years of engineering?
Generic Skills - Communication skills / body-language /
etiquettes (Can you speak fluently for at least two minutes on any given topic?
Does your body language exude the confidence? Is your attire too casual/too fashionable
(due to which the recruiter may think of you as a not-a-serious candidate while
hiring)?
Emotional Intelligence – “the capacity for recognizing our own
feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing
emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”
All five elements
are important and missing one can considerably reduce a student's
employability. Each element is important in its own right, but all five
overlap and are integral to each other.
Although attitude is a big parameter
(& it is briefly covered under Emotional Intelligence, which is also called
as ‘Emotional Quotient’), I won’t delve much on it in this article.
The important reason being, the focus of
the article is for freshers/engineering graduates/juniors with hardly one-two
years of work experience. Assume, there is a requirement of 20 BlockChain professionals & you (as an employer) received 100 profiles/applications
for it. You will filter, say 40 applications/profiles purely based on whether
the said candidate has done any course/certification/training in BlockChain or has
worked in it. You won’t filter the applications going by the great attitude the
applicant might have described in his CV. You will try to gauge the attitude
only in 2nd (or 3rd) round in F2F interaction. So, the
hard-skills (read, relevant degree/certificates/training/job-skills) is the
primary filter (or, call it a door-opener) to increase the employability.
A degree is no
longer enough –
Due to changing market conditions (in short – glut of
supply and very less demand of entry-level jobs), it makes sense to augment the
basic degree with a post-graduation or with a training course in the latest
technology.
As per one survey conducted by Times of India, following
skills and experiences are the most predictive of a graduate’s employability
(in the descending order of importance, top-most being most important):
1.
Professional experience
2.
High degree of specialization
3.
Excellent academic record
4.
Extra-curricular activities
5.
Proficiency in at least two foreign languages
6.
Graduation from a top university
To be employed is to be at risk, to be
employable is to be secure –
Can anyone disagree with this?
Remember, employability is not restricted to passing out
graduates (freshers) alone. The way IT (rather, ICT) has been impacting our
daily life through many disruptive innovations, lot of skills are becoming
outdated.
The Big-4 IT organizations in India (TCS, Infosys, Wipro
& Cognizant) are investing a lot in automation, Artificial Intelligence,
which in turn could reduce the in-take of freshers/junior-level hiring
drastically. It will also impact thousands of middle-level managers. And then
there are many middle-level managers who are either working on some archaic
technology (which no other organization is using) or who just fell in love with
their big titles and so are working like clipped winged birds (and so are
highly prone for lay-offs) .The only way to survive in today’s corporate jungle
is to develop a keen eye (to see which are the emerging trends/technologies
& which will be obsolete) & to develop an open mind to un-learn,
continuously learn new things, re-invent, adapt ourselves, say after every 5
years! (Can’t resist sharing Andy Grove’s quote here, “paranoids survive”)
Rather going one step ahead, the thinking needs to be,
not to seek employment but to create it! (And that will be my next blog)
Best
luck!
