BOOSTING SKILL SETS

Increasing the employability of youth

GROUP NIYOJANIYATA:

Nayana Unni

Swathi Maganty

Evelyn Joseph

Andrea Gemma

Vijaylaxmi Das

SIBM - Bengaluru

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.

FACTS!!

According to Kapil Deorukhkar, Regional Manager at IndiaSkills, a skills training company, "Nearly 85 percent of graduates are not employable, while 75 percent of engineering graduates are not employable." Some of the reasons cited for the same are lack of focus and definite career path among graduates, undue emphasis on academic excellence, lack of industry-relevant curriculum and the like.

LOW LEVELS OF EMPLOYABILITY IN INDIA

Not passionate enough to stir interest

Engineer or doctor ?

Lack of lucrative career options in other streams

Lack of stream specific colleges

lack of quality teachers

No proper training provided

Not looked at as a part of the curriculum

no emphasis on need for communication skills

Students not free to choose stream of education

Under qualified teachers

No industry oriented curriculum

No scope for creativity

Long working hours

Let us have a look at what we have identified as the four most important of

the many root causes for this problem, with a cause and effect diagram….

Inflexible education system

Let us now broadly look into each root cause..

1.No emphasis on need for communication skills 2. lack of quality teachers

Communication and social skills (most important parameter that organisations

look for)

Poor quality primary and secondary education, schools

mostly not being English medium

Regular training/resources

not provided

Need is not emphasized on till

just before the interviews

Comm skills not a part of

the curriculum

Teachers exhibiting very poor

communication skills

Doctor or Engineer?

I WANT NEITHER!

If students are not given the freedom to choose their stream of educational interest, how can they

be expected to deliver value?

Absolutely no scope for

innovation in the curriculum

No industry oriented

education

Too much pressure in the

Indian education

system

No lucrative career options available for

unconventional streams

3.Students not free to choose stream of education 4. Inflexible education system

Other factors have been identified as…

BRAIN DRAIN

• If the actual competent graduates opt for opportunities outside India, it is a severe blow to the Indian employment scene

FAMILY BUSINESSES

• Students from large business families tend to be complacent about education as they always have a backup career option

LACK OF TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Students specialising in different fields like computer science, electrical and electronics engineering etc usually lack the actual technical skills required by the respective core organisations.

Proposed Solutions:

Quality of education

Better qualified teachers

Regular soft skills training

Quality education

since primary level

Industry oriented

education

Freedom to choose a

career path

• Parents should allow/support the career decisions of their kids

• Parents should be exposed to the various career paths available

Increase the prominence of different

career options

• Students must be forced to think beyond the conventional career paths

• Workshops and training should be conducted on a bigger scale

Change in education systems

• Intermediate education systems should be drastically changed

• There should be scope for innovative answers/solutions in the curriculum

Education Systems

and Career Paths

IMPLEMENTATION

QUALITY OF EDUCATION:

• Excellent communication skills and technical knowledge can only be inculcated from a young age, with proper guidance. Such parameters should be considered while formulating a school curriculum as it would make a bigger impact as the student progresses academically.

• Teachers have a huge impact on their students because of which a good teacher can make a lot of difference in inducing interest in the students. Better qualified teachers who are passionate about their subjects should be provided and the quality of teachers should not be compromised on at any cost.

• Teachers should not only be strong in technical concepts but also in communication skills. A teacher who speaks broken English becomes a standing joke and is never taken seriously by the students.

• Soft skills is something that cannot be learnt in a day but has to be practised. Proper and regular training about the different aspects of communication should be provided.

• Companies look for organisation ready students so students should be also taught in an industry oriented manner for a better understanding.

Education System and Career Paths

• The first career options that are considered by parents for their kids are: Doctor or Engineer. This is mainly because they feel that these are the most lucrative career paths available, which is not the case. The point is that they are not exposed to the other career options available because of which those options are sidelined.

• This notion should be removed by exposing them to the various career options available in different fields and make them interact with people pertaining to those professions. Workshops could be conducted for students as well as parents for better exposure to career options.

• Also, the government should stop giving permissions to build more engineering/medical colleges as most of the upcoming colleges offer very poor quality education but a graduate degree which is of absolutely no use. The Government should keep a tab on the quality of education being administered to the students.

• Also, the regime of education in India is inflexible, especially in the south. Intermediate colleges (11th and 12th) colleges should understand that a student studying maths, physics and chemistry from 7am to 10pm is in no way going to be productive.

• Also students should be given an opportunity to answer examination questions in an innovative manner in instead of laying guidelines to only stick to bookish answers.

IMPACT

• The primary impact would be on the school going kids, from where the quality of education would be gradually increasing to the upper academic levels.

• With the provision of better qualified teachers, the general levels of technical/conceptual knowledge would increase in students. Also, with regular soft skills training as part of the curriculum, students would become more confident and the overall quality of students would increase to a great extent.

• When students have the freedom to choose their own career paths, with proper suggestions and guidance, they can choose career paths which appeal most to them due to which they will be more passionate and will eventually be able to perform better in their respective fields.

• Also, the society would start shifting towards new career paths due to which the density of engineering students would reduce, because of which concentration can shift towards solely improving the quality of graduate education.

• It would boost students’ morale and thought abilities if they were treated more like students and not be forced to study beyond a particular point.

• This would in a way, also decrease the overall suicide rate where students turn to suicide as the first option when they do not perform well in the chosen field.

Thank You!!

• We sincerely hope that employability in India can be greatly improved!