Producing employable graduates is need of the hour

Hyderabad: A seminar on ‘Fostering Employability’ was conducted by FICCI along with ‘SMART Training Resources Pvt Ltd’ on Tuesday where top leaders of the industry shared their views at the event. Are Universities fostering graduate employability?

Is it lack of employment opportunities that the students face or is it employment skills which students lack which is leaving them without employment were some of the areas the panelists highlighted. They also shared ideas on bridging the gap between academia and industry.

The industry leaders urged the academicians to ensure that they produce ‘employable’ graduates, and mere degrees would not help students in seeking employment.

Dr Srinagesh Chatarajupalli, Head Training Division at Infosys said that students should be driven with a lot of passion and strong desire.“

I went to a college to interview students, there were about 50-60 students who were present, one student got a package of 100 lakhs, another student got a package of 40 lakhs, a few students got a package of 3-4 lakhs and about 15-20 students didn't get any offer.”

He said he was surprised that there was so much variation in a single classroom. “I went and met the students who didn’t get any offer; the blame-game had started, a few blamed their lecturers, a few blamed their parents saying that no one told that they have to clear an aptitude test to secure a job.”

“I think it’s important we tell students and prepare them for the long run ahead. To me two important things are language of English and language of metrics. There are a lot of opportunities but not many reach up to it as they lack the skill needed,” he opined.

Experts from the industry also shared their thoughts on ‘Preparing the next-gen for emerging industry markets’ and underscored the importance of practical knowledge rather than book knowledge.

Sunil Sankar, Vice President, HR, CA Technologies defined employability as a capability to secure rewarding outcome and mentioned that unfortunately it did not say rewarding job. He cited an example of a PhD holder and said he was astonished to know that a PhD holder didn’t have a job.

“I was looking out for a tutor who could teach my daughter Physics, so I looked up for a few contacts and came across this gentleman. Twelve years post PhD he was giving home tuitions and didn’t have a job.

I would like to quote our ex- President APJ Abdul Kalam…‘India is facing some amount of unemployability, but not unemployment’. What often people look for are degrees than a job. I do agree that there should be some connect between academia and industry but there is a fine tuning of curriculum that is needed,” said Sunil Sankar.

He highlighted that ideas and innovations should be given more importance than degrees. “We should talk about what global organisations are doing. It’s about sustaining employability and not fostering employability.

Students should build on certain skills; they must be self-reliant and confident. Instead of conducting seminar and workshops, organisations should build business, incubation labs which will bring out the best of ideas from students.”

Sridevi Adabala, Head Sales Leadership at Tech Mahindra shared her opinion that graduates should encourage themselves to continually develop their personal skills, qualities and experiences in order to compete in the graduate job market.

“Creating an environment for fostering employability, but there are certain issues like lack of awareness-low employability quotient, professional foundation skills, communication, aptitude and the attitude to continuously learn- only these can help sustain employability,” she said.

“Industry is looking for students, who are able to think creatively, negotiate well, manage their time and influence others. Innovative and experiential learning is the kind of teaching one should adapt to, an individual should be allowed to experience an activity and then take learning out of it.

The academia should prepare students to change from time to time and adapt to those changes,” these are qualities we should help our students build on, she added.