Unemployability – decoded –II

This is in continuation of what I wrote yesterday and in this blog, I want to write about communication and what the Corporates really expect from a fresher.  

Communication skills:  Another major reason for someone getting rejected in the interviews and not being employable is lack of “basic” communication skills.  When I say basic, what I mean is the ability to construct English sentences without basic grammatical mistakes, organize your thoughts logically and communicate them effectively. 

However, the ground reality is not many are able to do it even to the minimum expected level. This is even after 14 years of schooling and 3 years of graduation of course.

Root causes for poor communication

# Get your priorities right:  Many times I see that lot of focus is given for getting good grades & percentiles and there is very little focus given for communication. Effective communication gives life to your thoughts and learnings. So do give equal priority to communication too.

# Short-cut approaches: Few years ago, I used to come across books that assure learn a language in 30 days. This can never happen.   Any skill improvement is a long term and step-by-step process. Cramming technique that helps to get grades (only grades) can never help here. You cannot develop it right before your campus hiring.  Get yourself committed to learn and improve right from your first semester.  

# Lack of seriousness:  The seriousness to participate in the employability programs organized by the colleges / educational institutions or to take any self-initiative is very less. This could be due to wrong prioritization.  Get serious. 

# Poor Reading habits:  As a society, our reading habit has come down and not many students get to read on a regular basis. This is one good habit that can be a differentiator between good and bad communicators.

To conclude, if you want to get your dream job, do focus on your communication skills and it cannot be developed overnight. It’s a long-term process.

This is one skill that will have a big positive impact on India’s employability index from the existing 25% to much higher level.

Success stories from Tier-2 cities

Subroto Bagchi- We know that he is one of the co-founders of Mind Tree, one of the leading IT organizations in India.  Let us have a look at his background.  He was born and brought up in a small town in Orissa. He could not go to school till the age of 8 and he studied in Oriya medium. He started his career as a Clerk in a Government set-up.  He has authored many books which are best sellers.

What is behind his effective communication: One of the routine activities that he had to do was to read out the English Newspapers to his Father on a daily basis which helped him to master the language and connect with the world too. 

Srinivas Rao Kandula, Head - HR iGATE capgemini

He was born in a village in Andhra Pradesh. He did not go to School till the age of 8 years. He failed in 10th Standard and took two attempts to clear it. He studied in Telugu Medium. Later on, he went on to complete his PG Degree and Doctorate in HR from XLRI. He has authored 8 books and published over 60 papers.

There are lot more success stories and you can become one too.

So we cannot keep blaming the system and circumstances for our failure. If you want to make it, do get started... Today.

The Chinese way: Chinese read comic books to pick up and improve their English communication skills.  That’s not a short cut but an innovative method to pick up and improve your English communication.  Comics have simple sentences and commonly used simple vocabularies. You may look at reading comic books too on a regular basis. You can learn how to construct simple sentences with commonly used words. A simple yet an effective way to improve one’s communication skills.

Employability skills – No skill can be developed overnight. If you look at any successful people in life, you would see tons of hard work and efforts behind them.  It’s not an overnight success.  One of my favorite example is Magnus Carlson. All of us know that he is the youngest world champion in chess. He was just 21 when he beat Viswanathan anand.  What many do not know is the amount hard work that goes behind. By the time he was 15, the time that he spent on chess was equal to 15,000 hours. Yes. You’ve read that right.  So take a long-term approach to developing your skills. Nothing else can work.

What do the corporates expect?

# Basics – You should be strong in fundamentals. We want to know what you know rather than what you do know. Example, when you say something is your favorite subject, do get to know something about it.

# Reasonable Communication – You are fresher and the expectation is also at minimum level of communicating with confidence and without grammatical mistakes.

# Good attitude and commitment level- Be your original self and talk about what you know. Whatever you do know, do accept and commit yourself to learn them. 

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                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO