The Hindu Business Line : Job-ready?

India has a large workforce — about 3.5 million graduates pass out of colleges each year — and half of this population is under 25. But “these large numbers are not translated into an employable talent pool”, says Srini Krishnamurthy, Managing Director of Expertus, a US-based training process outsourcing company.

Effective communication, team work, problem-solving initiative, planning and organisation, self management and, most importantly, basic skills of reading, writing and Maths are among the ‘employability skills’ listed out by Nikhil Indrasenan, Business Head, Ma Foi Academy — the training division of Ma Foi Management Consultants. He goes on to add that “almost 50 per cent of today’s graduates are considered unemployable because they lack these basic skills”. And so, you’ll find ‘educated’ people in their late-20s receiving lessons in vocabulary, functional grammar, writing skills, and even voice and accent at the training programme conducted by the company.

Faulting the country’s education system, Indrasenan says it “is locking millions of students at the bottom of the economy. The classroom environment, silent note-taking and emphasis on discipline, at the expense of analysis, debate and persuasion, have resulted in students in their 20s remaining infantilised.”

Students in tier II and III colleges are found to suffer “not from dearth of technical ability or intelligence. What is simply lacking is ‘soft skills’ sought by the new generation of employers but still not taught by the change-resistant education system”, he rues. And companies feel the pinch. “Companies operate in an extremely competitive environment and their success or failure is closely linked to the people resources they have. Corporates are constantly battling the war for talent — they want to hire more but just cannot find them,” says Krishnamurthy.

Rather than wait for the education system to reform itself, companies have decided to step in and address the situation proactively. “Companies are investing large sums in training to bring fresh recruits up to speed in skills required for them to contribute,” he says.

He estimates that the spend on overall training (not specifically freshers’ training) ranges from 0.5-2 per cent of annual turnover and in the case of IT/ITeS about 3-5 per cent.

This, in turn, has opened up a large opportunity for training companies, an industry pegged at nearly Rs 5,000-6,000 crore.

The challenges involved in training include helping the group unlearn and re-learn concepts. “It means more effort on our part, but that’s the reality and somebody has to do it,” says Indrasenan. Expertus has designed a 36-60 hour “College to Corporate” programme based on corporate expectations on talent acquisition. “The course is split into stepping stones and finishing schools where topics such as conquering inhibitions, having a learning mindset, fundamentals of good team, mind your language, power communication, group discussions and acing job interviews are covered,” says Krishnamurthy. The training faculty is drawn largely from the corporate world. Krishnamurthy points out that many students, and their parents, are unsure and confused about career choices. He advises students to identify and list the various roles that they find interesting and then match the role to individual strengths. They could then decide on a suitable entry-level training programme to make them job ready.

Realising that companies are looking for ‘employable skills’, colleges are also gearing up to train students in specific industry-related skills. There is also an increasing number of ‘academia-industry collaborations and online learning platforms’. But at the end of the day, says Krishnamurthy, it is the students who must realise that in today’s competitive environment merely graduating from a college will not assure them a job. “They must actively seek ways of developing their skills.”

Related Stories:
Cos setting up institutes to train blue-collar workers
HR shortage — let’s wake up to the threat
IBM trains faculty members to improve student employability

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