Employability Gaps, Challenges, and Solutions

Nitin Pande’s dilemma on fresher hiring as Delivery Head of BeDifferent.org

Monday 1200 HRS, BeDifferent’s Office

Taking a sip of the coffee at noon in his office, Nitin talks to his HR Leader and shares how frustrated he feels when he sees these resignations of freshers who joined BeDifferent last year. He had ensured they were trained effectively for last one year and now after having invested too much on their development and readiness towards becoming productive, a few of them had resigned. He has started to believe that instead of providing technology solutions to his customers, his company is turning into a factory of training hired candidates for other companies. 

The situation which Nitin is facing is not unique in Indian IT Industry. There are two issues associated to this. One, companies don’t have enough stickiness to retain the young. Second, due to non-employability of young candidates, companies are forced to put them through rigorous training programs. By the time the new candidates become productive, the company would probably have invested over 10 to 12 months on their development and readiness for putting them on to live customer projects. 

Addressing the Issue of Employability at its root:

A few months back, 3DPLM – Dassault Systèmes R&D Lab in India, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to set up Product Innovation Lab at Walchand College of Engineering-Sangli. This would be the sixth such Product Innovation Lab in Walchand. The primary objective of these labs is to create and provide a platform to all the young minds in Engineering colleges where they can “Learn by Doing”. This proactive method would not only enhance their employability but also cater to the Skill India mission. All our labs have been well received by all the colleges where we have entered into such arrangement. Students that are actively participating and engaging themselves in these labs have benefited the most from the practical orientation and hands on experience provided by these labs.

As a 3DExperience company, our objective is to transform the learning experience by offering academic and research institutions opportunities to leverage the power of experience to transform the way people interact with and discover the world around them. To help today’s students be better prepared for tomorrow’s real world experiences and research scientists empowered to find better answers to difficult challenges more quickly, we have equipped them with accurate 3D models of the real world and know-how to use them. Providing students access to and training to 3D technology has never been more imperative.

In the Indian context, we find that while Industry has forged ahead and while as a nation we have advanced in the areas of Information and Technology, our academia and research facilities have fallen behind. We continue to read and hear various reports which are published from time to time indicating how broad the gap around employability is. Out of 100 engineering graduates, not more than 25 are employable. As of today, graduates from colleges have to undergo rigorous training programs, including shadow projects for 6 to 9 months, for them to be ready for the organization’s requirements. Sometimes, by the time these young minds become productive, a company may have already invested on their development for over 12 months or so. IT companies are becoming more of training schools than being innovation hubs. Besides, the cost to training is very high not because of training but because of losing valuable time to create and provide Innovative solutions to the market especially in the environment where competition is intense and fierce. 

Key Gaps in Employability: Employability requires three key ingredients of competency – Knowledge, Skills and Attitude. Knowledge is just one component and not the only factor. While academia has been doing a good job on the knowledge front, it has failed to address the gap in technical skills development, including the enhancement of soft skills. A major reason for this is that the speed at which the curriculum is revised at Universities is not agile enough to keep pace with industry .

If Universities invested in creating full-fledged practical experiences for their students, their placement ratio and credibility will soar automatically in long run. For the right results, academic institutions should partner closely with industry.   

Such partnership would mean investment from the industry both in terms of time and money, with uncertain ROI. However, if this investment is channelized effectively, it could result in positive changes that work to the benefit of both the academia and industry.  

I am listing below some initiatives that can be taken up by Industries –

1.      Setting up Product Innovation Lab to enable the culture of Innovation in the colleges Provide ‘learn by doing’ opportunities to students who would then be able to think and learn beyond their conceptual and theoretical learning. In Dassault Systèmes, we truly believe that when we provide such opportunities to students, they can learn faster and also innovate. Future innovations would come from such labs. 

2.      Mentorship interventions for Professors. Unless Professors or Faculty members are not trained on new technologies and skills, they would not be able to teach their students. This can best be supported by Industry. Conducting regular webinars, having mentorship programs for faculty members, inviting faculty members to visit company premises and share new trends with them including giving them demo on new emerging technologies can benefit Academia in a big way. In Dassault Systèmes, we have been actively partnering with colleges in this space and have an outreach program for skill development of professors and faculty members. 

3.      Corporate world understands the importance of soft skills. Organizations invest a lot towards enhancing the soft skills of their employees. Often, Industries find the soft skills of hired candidates not meeting standards. Having experiential sharing from the corporate sector including learning around ‘campus to corporate’ journey will be of great help. Having connect programs and experiential sharing sessions from corporates to campuses would go a long way in addressing this gap.

4.      Encouraging Alumni-based mentorship program. All students who have graduated must pay back their colleges by mentoring students. Their timely guidance will better prepare students to be effective in their first corporate job.

Attitude

Knowledge and Skills of an individual are driven by attitude. Based on my experiences in different organizations, these are my suggestions to address shortcomings on this front.

1.      Understand and focus on one’s strengths without being overly concerned about competition

2.      Understand the importance of soft skills competencies such as Communication, Problem Solving, Client Orientation etc. 

3.      Deciding between Compensation vs. Learning Opportunities 

4.      Missing alignment to company culture and value systems 

5.      Restricted domain or a skill set (companies prefer employees that are agile that can change their skill set to current demands) 

The requirement is two-fold: Accept these issues and start sensitizing and make students aware of these challenges. Secondly, partner with Industry or training partner to bridge this gap. This should help ensure more employable candidates.