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Why Mapping Minds
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Academicians, the industry or the government, everyone is stressing on the need for employability skills in young graduates.
The oft-quoted NASSCOM-McKinsey report which says that approximately 75 per cent of fresh engineering graduates from India
are not directly employable gave the entire idea of employability an identity of its own. If that was not enough, a recent
survey conducted by FICCI and the World Bank revealed that 64 per cent of the surveyed employers were not satisfied with the
quality of engineering graduates' skills.
Now the million dollar question is what constitutes employability skills? and why are they so essential for success in
getting a job?
Domain-Specific Employability Skills
These skills make one job-ready for a certain industry, for eg: banking, retail, insurance, auto, fashion designing etc.
These are vocational skills and make one conversant with the elementary knowledge of working in the industry of choice,
making one more attractive for recruiters. For engineers, domain-specific skills might include quality assurance, testing,
network administration etc, whereas for management graduates, gaining skills related to the mutual fund industry, insurance
and pension fund selling, share trading and depository services, stock and inventory management, etc will make them more
employable.
General Employability Skills
These include basic communication skills as reading, listening and writing and communication skills that include higher
order influence, negotiation, etc. written and unwritten. Apart from communication skills, knowledge industries, career
paths, work ethic, critical thinking and effective time management to ease the employment in the industry.According to the
FICCI survey, the three most important general skills are integrity, reliability and teamwork, and expertise are most
important are entrepreneurship, communication, English and familiarity with the tools and modern technology.
The Recruiter's Perspective
If potential candidates appearing for any recruitment process have the necessary knowledge, it becomes easy for the recruiter to filter the merit of not-so-merit. Furthermore, the employment of people with the desired job readiness skills will lead to a significant reduction in time, effort and money spent on training new recruits.Another benefit of
hiring people with relevant employability skills is that it helps in managing attrition as only those who are interested in that field will take up the job.
How to Bridge the Gap?
The same is the case with employability. Employability skills can be best learned in a live environment through interactive
and experiential learning curriculum where a person first experiences something and then derives the learning from that
activity. This way the learning becomes permanent and more effective.
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