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Employability Gap: A challenge for India 2020 By Deepak Menaria There has been significant growth in educational institutions over last decade with increasing number of engineering graduates passing out year by year. One of the good things to happen in India in recent times has been that professional higher education has spread its wings to reach common man and ordinary people now dream of becoming an engineer or doctor or management professional unlike few decades back when it was for few privileged class getting into limited government colleges. This clearly means that thousands of qualified graduates pass out every year and get started with journey to fulfill their dreams. One of the studies has put increase in number of professional’s colleges as 3 times in last decade. Also recent times have witnessed explosive growth on various sectors in India with IT emerging as one of major surprise sector in last decade. IT sector has been a choice of popularity by youth because of its charm, dignity, high income and “white collar “status. Bio- medicine/Pharma has been another technologic/research field gaining momentum in last few years. Standing of Infosys on global platform is manifestation of IT revolution in India in last decade. Projections indicate that industry would require additional 6 million software professionals over next ten years India wide. This clearly means opportunity is huge even going by moderate estimates for youth which open flood gates for youth to fulfill their dreams. India 2020 dream of becoming a super power and big stakeholder in international matters would need talented and employable workforce with India’s youth population becoming one of the major prime movers for our growth. Let’s examine following two set of statements, Set 1 The supply end (academic institutions) looks healthy, The demand end (Industrial sector) looks healthy Set 2 Not all graduates get suitably employed, Companies struggle to get their demand fulfilled by quality talent Looking at set 1 and 2, one thing is clear there exits some problem because both sets do not justify each other. So where is the problem? This problem can be suitably defined as problem of “employability gap”. This gap exists because youth passing out from various professional colleges in IT education and other sectors are not suitably equipped to get employed in industry. “The shortage of appropriately skilled labor across many industries is emerging as a significant and complex challenge to India's growth and future. According to NASSCOM (National Association of Software Companies), each year over 3 million graduates and post-graduates are added to the Indian workforce. However, of these only 25 percent of technical graduates and 10-15 percent of other graduates are considered employable by the rapidly growing IT and ITES segments. Hence, what we have today is a growing skills gap reflecting the slim availability of high-quality college education in India and the galloping pace of the country's service-driven economy, which is growing faster than most countries in the world. As businesses propose to double and treble their workforces and India Inc. strives to maintain its position in the global marketplace, it has become imperative to prepare and plan for a world-class, competent, talented and innovative workforce. It is widely held that knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness of people are critical to sustain development, economic, and social activity in a knowledge society. Given the current high-paced growth and dynamic investment climate in India, the demand for knowledge workers with high levels of technical and soft skills will only increase. It is estimated that India would require a workforce of 2.3 million employees in the IT and IT-enabled services sectors by 2015. However, over the past fifteen years, India has produced 1.6 million professionals and faces the uphill task of producing another 0.8 million in the next two years. In this demand-supply gap scenario of employability, a look at the Indian education system will reveal that the number of technical schools in India, including engineering colleges, has actually more than trebled in the last decade, according to the All India Council of Technical Education. Part of the skills gap problem is that only a small percentage of India's young go on to higher education. No more than 7 per cent of Indians aged 18-25 go to college, according to official statistics. Even a more fundamental level of education is proving difficult with nearly 40 per cent of people over the age of 15 being illiterate. Ironically, it is becoming even harder to create a robust and continuous pipeline of talent. The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new league of colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality. Further, universities and educational institutions have been unable to update their syllabi in tune with the high speed changes taking place in the world of technology. Hence, the students churned out are not equipped to meet the current industry requirements and often companies have to incur additional expenses (time and monetary) to train new hires. One of the approaches to tackle the problem of lacking job readiness in the Indian IT sector is partnerships between the industry and academia. Many organizations have taken such initiatives to provide hands on experience, practical skills and soft skills to bride this gap and provide training in high-demand job skills. But such limited initiatives can meet numbers to limited extend.
It’s high time now for our education system needs to reboot itself and joint initiatives by the industry and academia will play an important part in plugging the talent gap in the years to come. Training individuals for the jobs of the future and allowing them to visualize what it possible today will not only make a difference in their lives but will enrich our communities now and for the future. In such an environment of high interaction, the existence of any business/economy is dependent upon not only the optimal utilization of current available resources, but also on innovation and communication. However, there is often a gap between what college students learn in theory and what is actually practiced in industry. This further attracts cost when industries conduct training programs internally to make their Fresh talent “deployable”. Industries also struggle to maintain bottom-lines in a competitive environment and this ‘gap’ further creates a dent on profitability. There is an opportunity here. Those involved in college recruitment can help address this tension by facilitating the relationship and by providing a basic framework for understanding why difficulties occur when trying to collaborate between different value sets as in industry and academia. Both industry and higher education involve knowledge creation, dissemination and learning. Those involved in college recruitment can serve as a bridge to help industry and academia become collegially networked institutions. “For India to maintain its competitive advantage, the educational institutions need to produce industry-ready candidates” There are multiple competencies and skills people acquire during education and many are acquired by experience. The requirement of each job demands for different set of competencies and skills for example what is required for marketing job would be different from what is required for software development job. Each job with different work environment and team dynamics required different abilities to meet the objectives of the job. These abilities or capabilities are learned during education or few are acquired through general experience of co existence in society. Many such skills are naturally acquired over years by own experience and understanding the world around. These abilities can be broadly categorized into following five buckets:
Fundamental skills are basic abilities which are naturally required to perform the specific job. Generally the wider term like Aptitude is used to refer to these fundamental skills. Normally these skills are acquired during school education and these skills become like a foundation for the career progression. Technical skills are competencies which are learned and acquired during college/professional education as per the specific job. These are normally knowledge based skills which are taught during various courses to prepare an individual for specific job. Technical skills are different for different job as per the knowledge requirement for the job and industry. The key aspects of domain knowledge and practical application of knowledge are also part of technical skills. Communication skills are abilities required for effective communication in professional environments. These are part of basic life skill but because of their significance in changing work environments they are been identified as separate category. These include language and primary skills for communication such as reading, writing and speaking. Information is supreme and effective communication plays important role for people to work together. Life skills are basic skills which are required for human existence and success. Normally these are generic skills which are typically common for various professions. These skills are acquired through experience, aging and self driven understanding. Most of the attitudinal attributes would be part of life skills. It is rightly said that right attitude and right aptitude is a good blend for successful career. Life skills have relevance beyond work life and are relevant to personal as well as social lives of people. Social skills are abilities to work and perform in social environments. Professional environment have a strong social dimension because of many individuals working together for a common objective and mission. Managing relationships at work is a key requirement for performance and ability to lead and work in team decides the accomplishment of larger objective of an organization. Academic institutions work towards making students ready for industry and meet the requirements of software industry. Various subjects are taught during college/education to meet these requirements of Industry. The ultimate purpose of such professional institutions is to produce employable talented work force to meet the growing needs of the industry. A study has found and described various components of this “Employability Gap” in terms of Skill Gap. A comparison was done between ‘What skill/knowledge is imparted during education’ versus ‘What is required by Industry’. The findings have thrown some exciting facts. Communication Skills have the highest ‘gap’ from employability perspective where as Life Skills and Fundamental Skills have moderate ‘gap’. Another observation has been that the Social Skills and Technical Skills have low degree of ‘gap’ on employability barometer.
This “employability gap” needs immediate attention and more importantly in order to fulfill our dream of India 2020, we have just 10 years to go. Communication skills need highest focus during academic times for youth in order to bridge this ‘gap’ from industries perspective followed by Life Skills and Fundamental Skills. Academic fraternity and industries needs to join hands and contribute towards this mission. A small effort by all partners in ecosystem would make a difference. How can we meet this challenge and work towards reduction in Gap and making youth industry ready for future. Here are few recommendations:
A small step in right direction by all members of education fraternity as well as corporate/industry world towards getting close to each other and work towards “Youth Transformation” would ensure we achieve our dream of India 2020.
Study by: Deepak Menaria, BE, MBA, BA, MS Associate Vice President- HR, GlobalLogic India, Nagpur Co-Founder-Lambent Technologies (Now GlobalLogic Inc) | www.globallogic.com Co-Founder- Lighthouse People Services Pvt Ltd | www.lighthousepeople.in Mail: deepak.menaria@globallogic.com LinkedIn: http://in.linkedin.com/in/deepakmenaria
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