How Cambridge University’s Campustowork matches skills to jobs

That engineering is no longer the default career choice for the lakhs of students leaving school every year is obvious from the dwindling number of applications to engineering colleges.

In Tamil Nadu alone, the number of students who applied for engineering courses through Anna University in academic year 2016-17 has dropped to 1,33,000 from 1,54,238 the previous year.

The huge number of engineering colleges, set up in response to growing demand over the last few decades, may be one reason for this. The other issue is employability, with top managements of corporates and PSUs finding most engineering graduates unable to adequately translate academic learnings to on-the-job competence.

Vital factors that make for better ‘employability’ are language strength and good communication skills. A new effort to address this comes from CampustoWork ( ctw ), an initiative of Cambridge English Language Assessment, of Cambridge University. Cambridge English has, for over 20 years now, conducted training programmes in schools across India, helping students learn the English language in a professional way. In a related activity, the Campustowork.org portal brings together corporates and educational institutions to match candidates who possess the right qualifications with the jobs most suitable for them.

Connecting the talented young students with organisations that are the best fit for them is difficult for institutions. Employers too face the challenge of recruiting candidates with the right mix of technical and communication skills. Campustowork provides institutions a free platform to showcase their strengths as partners from where employers can hire the right candidates.

TK Arunachalam, Regional Director, South Asia, Cambridge English Language Assessment, says: “In just the first two weeks since it opened, still in its beta version, 101 companies signed up on the portal, more than the number of colleges that were on board!

The bulk of these are not big consumer goods or e-commerce companies or IT majors but small and medium entities that see value in the name behind a portal such as campustowork.” Now, a few months later, 142 corporates and 119 educational institutions are registered. Some of the companies are American Express, Pramati Technologies and Transformers and Rectifiers India. Among the institutions are Sathyabama University, Chennai and Birla Institute of Management Technology, Bhubaneshwar. Many of the companies, says Arunachalam, do not recruit from campuses directly but want their brands to be promoted and see themselves as important recruiters too, on par with an Infosys or a TCS. Their potential hires need not be from the IIMs or IITs either.

“Such companies are fine with hiring from the Tier 2 and 3 colleges, as long as the candidate is suitable for the job,” he says, adding: “The institutions signed up with include arts and science colleges, and we plan to include skill development centres too.”

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