“Unemployment” became the hottest topic of discussion after our honourable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi gave the statement about Pakora Selling. “More than 60% of the eight lakhs engineers graduating from technical institutions across the country every year remain unemployed, according to All India Council for Technical Education”, says a report published in “The Times of India” on March 18, 2017. The most popular explanation given for this is the lack of jobs. But, are there really only few jobs, or is it something else which is breeding this problem?

95% of engineering graduates lack basic coding skills, 67% of engineering graduates are not fluent in English and nearly 61% of them possess grammar skills no better than an eighth standard student as stated in a recent survey by Aspiring Minds. According to experts of industry and academia, only 3.84% of fresh engineering graduates are employable.

WHAT IS EMPLOYABILITY?

“The skills and abilities that allow you to be employed”, this is the basic definition of employability as per the Cambridge Business English Dictionary. Prof. Mantz Yorke defines employability as a set of achievements-skills, understandings and personal attributes-that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupation, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. Employability is not about simply getting a job, it is an ongoing success in your career for now and in future. It is not a list of skills that can be taught, it draws on a wide range of skills abilities and attributes and can vary from individual to individual.

To be geared up with employability skills is more important now than ever before in the light of world graduates are entering.

IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYABILITY

Nowadays graduates cannot rely on their degree to get themselves assured a satiating future career as recruiters are looking for work-ready candidates equipped with profound skills to meet the demand of market and industry. So to keep themselves a step ahead in this competitive job market, employability skills must be developed by the students in their graduation time.

Employers complain that neither graduates have adequate knowledge in their areas of study, nor conversant with current technology and advancement in their fields. Lack of innovation, communication skills, notably inability to express themselves clearly orally and in writing, as well as poor command in English language is mainly found these days within the candidates. These factors further lead to lack of confidence at work leading to delivery of poor service by graduates. The significant causes behind lack of employability skills in graduates are inappropriate curriculum, outdated syllabi, inadequate facilities & infrastructure. At the technical institution level, it is noted that academic incompetency and poor background incapability based training of students is a critical factor impeding technical graduates from realising employable skills at technical institutions. Moreover, candidates in technical education institutions have been brought up in knowledge based system and ideally trained to pass exams rather than building competencies. While academics equip an individual for future career, they focus a little on honing and refinement of personality aspects essential for effective functioning in an organisation. Simultaneously, students are also required to be familiar with rules of etiquette and protocol critical to success in corporate setting.

To bridge this gap, Noida Institute Of Engineering & Technology, Greater Noida has come up with Pyramid Finishing School (PFS) where students are first assessed on their various skills. For these assessments, NIET sponsors various assessment programs, in association with Aspiring Minds (Amcat), Cocubes.com, Mettl and many others. After these assessments, particular training is being organised accordingly by PFS on soft skills, technical skills, aptitude, verbal/non-verbal communication, corporate/social etiquettes which results in industry-ready professionals. Some other prominent features of PFS are; Pearson Test Centre (PTC), certification from ICICI Direct, CISCO Network Academy, Cambridge English Language assessment, Microsoft Innovation Centre and tie-up with CDAC Pune.

Inadequate supply of teaching and learning resources in technical institutes is yet another impediment to internalizing job skills by technical education candidates, the institutes are further confronted with the lack of competent instructors in the area of competency based training and required infrastructure, but NIET doesn’t let its students feel the lack of any learning resources or infrastructures. At NIET, we have various innovation labs under expert supervision; Smart Manufacturing Lab (under PTC Centre of Excellence), Mercedes Benz Academy for Diploma in Advanced Mechatronics, Applied Robotics Control Lab in association with APS, Industrial robotic establishment at European Centre for Mechatronics Germany and a virtual lab at NIET Campus with expert supervision from European Centre, Cloud computing research and training lab in association with Microsoft Cloud Services and Amazon Web Services, Internet of Things (IoT) using Raspberry Pi in association with IBM, Centre of Excellence for mobile application development on Android Platform, Big Data Systems Lab in association with DELL EMC, Advanced Lab for Product Design and 3D printing in association with PTC, Centre of Excellence for Embedded & VLSI Technology, Centre for Clinical Research and Bio-informatics and Centre for Process and Design Control.

Another factor is inadequate industrial attachment for both technical education instructors and trainees that denies them hands-on-experience. To overcome this issue NIET organises various industrial talks by Genpact, Amazon, ICICI, Indian Army and many more. It also organises industrials visits to Gulf Islamic Investments (Dubai), Yakult, SOFCON, NEWATER (Singapore) and more.

Also NIET hires instructors who have industrial experience; recently NIET has done a tie-up with Pega Systems. Under this program, 100 students will be trained to work on Pega Platform directly by Pega Systems itself.

“To be employed is to be at risk, to be employable is to be secure” –Peter Hawkins

So next time when you think of getting employed, first think about having employability skills.

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