Unemployability–decoded -I

India is a country with a population of more than 1.30 billion.  India happens to be a young country with 50% of its population under the age of 25 years and the two third of the population under 35 years. There are around 74 lakh students (various streams) passing out year on year from around 37,000 educational institutions across the country (open source)

Does it not sound terrific? 

Before we say yes, let us look at another couple of interesting data points. The GER (Gross enrollment ratio which refers to the percentage of population that gets enrolled for education) is 15% which is much less as compared to the developed countries. The employable talent is less, may be 20% to 25%.  Hence, it’s no surprise that there is a shortage of talent supply.  The actual supply of good talent is less than the demand and it is outstripping the demand. That’s what the ground reality is.

In this blog, I want to share my experience on why the employability is less and what needs to be done.  After seeing many thousands of students for more than a decade in Chennai and in the Tier -2 cities of Tamil Nadu, I feel that there are two fundamental things that majorly contribute to non- employability. One is lack of  Fundamentals and communication skills. I would share my thoughts on these two aspects.

Get your fundamentals right: When I interview candidates, I see that the non-employable talents lack the fundamentals, even the very basics. There is absolutely no application of what they studied. This includes even those who’ve got very high score in their academics.  A few sample examples are given below:

# A commerce student with Income Tax as his favorite subject not knowing various IT Slabs prevailing. OR stating that he studied in the first semester and he cannot remember now.

# A chemistry graduate (with a very good percentile / percentage) not able to tell which chemical is called laughing gas.

# A graduate with statistics as his favorite subject not knowing a good example for what sampling is.

# A Math student not knowing how to calculate percentage profit which we as part of our schooling, may be in 6^th or 7^th grade.

What do you think could be the root-causes?

# Cramming: As I see, the major root-cause to this problem is students are cramming without deeper understanding.  It helps to get good grades and it can help only to that extent.  The scariest part is you continue to think that you are too good till the reality hits you hard on your face that you are good only in terms of marks on the certificate but you lack the fundamentals and application of what you’ve studied.

It’s like believing that you can swim well but when you are in the pool, you realize that you are drowning and none of your skills that you thought you’ve learnt is helping you stay afloat.

# Short-cut approaches:  The purpose of education is not good grades alone. It should rather help us apply what we study, understand the fundamentals, organize and communicate our thoughts confidently & effectively and face the real work.  This is doable with 3 years of full time graduate course provided we approach it as a full-time preparation, not as a last minute crash preparation.  But unfortunately, most of us do the later part.  The preparation starts only in the last minute when the exam fever catches. Contrast this scenario with someone who has been preparing to really understand the subjects in its real sense with some amount of application right from the day -1 and on an on-going basis. These are the candidates who emerge successful even if their grades are little lower than the others.

Remember, learning requires a step-by-step continuous process and it cannot to be cut short or short-circuited.

# Quality of educational institute and systems:  Attributing our failure to this is like externalizing the reasons and not owning it ourselves.  We will never learn to hold ourselves accountable. The most competent and intelligent talents also come from the same system that we blame.

No doubt the system can be better.  But one cannot wait till it gets better and keep blaming it. Rather we should do what best we can do and what is within our control.  

A perfect example for real learning– A space to odyssey (source – The Hindu)

All of us know that India launched 20 satellites on 22^nd June ( PSLV C-34).  A very proud moment. Probably a less know fact is, one of the satellites launched to monitor greenhouse gas emission was designed and built by a bunch of 12 BE students from Sathyabama college, Chennai. They were working on this right from 2010.  Another interesting fact is most of them come from small towns.

I would write the remaining part in my next blog.  Do watch this space for more interesting updates. 

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO