1. Bridging the Gap Increasing Employability
Challenges. Methods. Opportunities
Bridging the Gap Increasing Employability
With specific references to Engineering graduates

2. The Talent Crunch India is on the verge of an apparent talent crisis
Progressive changes in the Industry
Lucrative sectors and multiple opportunities
The supply of competent workforce is unable to keep pace
Talent acquisition and retention pose major issues

3. Key Developments in Sectors
High Economic Growth – New Jobs
The country’s high economic growth created new jobs in the IT and IT enabled services (ITES), pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and engineering design sectors.
New Economy Sectors
Emergence of new economy sectors
Sectors such as finance, consultancy, insurance, organized retail; aviation, hospitality, animation, media, real estate and infrastructure opened up a wide variety of job opportunities
Global Labour Market
Many Indians being hired for jobs overseas.
At the same time, Indian companies are also hiring foreign nationals. The Indian job market and its opportunities are now lucrative to people from other countries
Narrowing In Skill Pyramid
Due to technical changes, most jobs in both manufacturing and services sector are clustered at the low productivity end, while some are at the high productivity end, with the middle narrowing down.
Thus, a majority of the work force is engaged in jobs requiring basic skills or specialization.

4. The main questions that come to one’s mind are
Which skills do employers consider important when hiring new engineering graduates?
In which important skills are the graduates falling short?
How satisfied are employers with the skills of engineering graduates?
What measures are being taken to improve the skills and make the engineering graduates match the expectations of employers?
Who is taking these measures and what have been some effective measures?

5. The Labour Market
Voice of the Employers

6. India Today
Can India rely on its demographic dividend to give it its skilled manpower?

7. What do we have?
K Ramkumar, Executive Director and Head of Operations & Human Resources at ICICI Bank, in an article for the Forbes wrote : ” For the next 35 years, close to 70 percent of India’s population will be between the age of 15 and 59.
By 2050, India will have 100 crore employable people. This is presented as the dividend against USA’s 27 crore employable people and Europe’s 45 crore.”

8. The Gaping Gap A felt need of adequately skilled workforce
Inability of supply to match needs and demand
Low absorption of supply into workforce due to ‘insufficient capabilities’
India currently has an annual skilling capacity of 4.3 million, less than 20% of the industry requirement of 22 million skilled workers.

9. Employability of Graduates
Sangeeta Gupta, Senior Vice President, NASSCOM said, “Our engineers are not unemployable, they just don’t have industry-ready talent. In other words, they lack the skills required for the jobs that are available to them.”
Employers in India are trying to broaden the talent pool and develop a recruitment philosophy to hire for general ability and attitude rather than specialized domain and professional skills (Wadhwa, Kim de Vitton, Gereffi, 2008).
Industry required Skills
Possessed Skills

10. Comparative Evaluation

11. Trepidation for our Future

12. SKILLS AND EMPLOYABILITY

13. What skills do they look for?
Domain or subject area expertise
Technically adept
Practical competence
Analytical power
Creativity
Innovation
Out- of- the box solutions
Willingness to learn
Impressive and confident
Communication skills
Ability to adapt
Team participation and initiative
Leadership
Problem solving
Sensitive to other cultures and different groups

14. Relative importance of skills
In a survey conducted in India and the USA, Employers in both countries rank team-work, applying math/science/engineering knowledge and communication skills high
Skills related to knowledge of contemporary issues, system design, and design of experiments were ranked low.
However, some skills are ranked differently, such as lifelong learning (valued by Indian employers and less by US employers).
Source: Employability and Skill Set of Newly Graduated Engineers in India-The World Bank (Policy Research Working Paper- April 2011)

15. Emergence of ‘Soft Skills’
The National Knowledge Commission report (2008) also emphasizes the importance of soft skills as one of the survival skills for individuals.
One of the reasons that employers perceive Soft Skills more important than Professional Skills might be that stronger Soft Skills, such as willingness to learn, lead to continuous improvement of Professional Skills.

16. Bridging the Gap
Noted management author Peter Drucker had said that the fastest growing industry would be training and development as a result of replacement of industrial workers with knowledge workers

17. Training and Development

18. Power Workers
Specialization and ability to perform multiple tasks with efficiency
Super specialization in his domain at a later stage
Ability and agility makes him a star performer.
Expert people skills
Can help turnaround sick processes and units.
Potential to lead

19. Challenges in Development
Learner
Planning
Implementation
Learning
Reception

20. The Way Forward Accessibility
Interaction: Switch from instructional methods
Accreditation
Infrastructure
Implementation
Evaluation
Improvement
Upgrading
Sustainability

21. THANK YOU