>Only 25 % IT graduates readily employable: NASSCOM

>At 25, and with a computer science degree from one of the top regional engineering colleges, Sandesh Kumar considered himself to be the luckiest among all his batch mates when he was picked by Infosys Technologies last year. But within three months, Kumar realised the initial training at Infosys’ sprawling Mysore campus was getting nowhere. “I actually sucked at everything – communications, language and understanding about some of the latest development tools,” Kumar says. “The company was kind enough to flag early that I might face hurdles ahead and I decided to quit,” he adds.

While Kumar’s unemployability is an extreme case, of the 550,000 engineering graduates passing out every year, anywhere between 10% and 25% cannot be readily employed by any technology firm in the country. Software lobby NASSCOM says only 25% of graduates working in IT are readily employable, while it is roughly 15% for back-office jobs. Growing gaps in skills needed for computer science graduates to start coding at the earliest is nothing new, but India Inc.’s modest progress in dealing with the problem is what marks the seriousness of the issue. India’s US$ 60 billion outsourcing industry is already spending almost $1 billion a year on readying these graduates, picked up from different campuses. But only marginal headway has been made with the percentage of employable engineering graduates moving up by just a per cent over the past six years to 25%.

“I did go to a private institute in Hyderabad for a three months refresher course, but they taught us more of the same. It didn’t seem to help at all,” agrees Kumar who joined a multinational tech support centre in Bangalore last month. While NASSCOM believes a quarter of the engineering graduates are unemployable, consulting firm Aspiring Minds paints a gloomier picture. In an employability study conducted last August, the firm found that merely 4.22% of engineering graduates are employable in product companies and only 17% in IT services.

On its part, NASSCOM says India’s large pool of engineers makes the employability percentage look even more daunting. “Comparison of India’s employability percentage with other nations is not fair. The talent pool in those countries is much smaller, and the quality of education has been much higher. The right to education bill has just been passed in India, and it will take time for it to show results,” says NASSCOM Vice President Sangeeta Gupta. NASSCOM has started two common assessment tests, which set a common benchmark for employability especially for students from tier 2-3 engineering colleges. “The 45-minute evaluation tests you on analytical, comprehension, writing and verbal skills. If a person is not good in voice, good analytical skills will get him a job in the BPO function in an IT firm. We have also started the train-the-trainer programme for universities,” she says.

“The percentage of non-engineering graduates in the pool of IT and BPO firms is also rising steadily. Companies are not complaining of any dearth of talent, as there is a large pool of three million graduates available to them a year, of which the industry’s demand is about 240,000 only per year. We don’t see a dearth for talent in future as well, though there will be competition from other sectors,” she adds.

Tech employers such as Adobe, the world’s biggest maker of graphic design software, says a stronger coordination between campuses and companies is needed. “The issue is real but not too much of a glaring problem for us as we go to the Tier I institutes where the curriculum is up-to-date and our experience has been good. But in other technology schools it is a problem. The curriculum is stuck in a time warp and there is very limited exposure to the industry,” says Jaleel Abdul, Senior Director, HR, Adobe Asia-Pacific.

“The best practice would be to let students learn from the industry and have strong university programs. Several of our senior technical team go to colleges as guest faculty and students come for internships, that helps a lot. As a result of most colleges not being in touch with the actual requirements, companies have to make a lot of additional investments in training which can be avoided,” he adds. Sanyukta, an engineering student set to graduate next year, says she had tough time finding a course that taught software testing – a growing, multi-billion dollar business for Indian tech firms.

“We need premier institutes to offer such courses, most of my batchmates are doing crash courses in testing from smaller private institutes,” she says. Some tech executives, however, play down the employability issue. “When you have such a big pool, these challenges will exist and I would say that going forward training will become core to companies. This will help us realign skills to business needs as and when needed and not wait for an institute to offer graduates in a particular discipline,” says the CEO of one of the top 10 software exporters. He requested anonymity because his company is under a silent period.

Apart from investing more in in-house training, IT companies have also started looking at non-engineering graduates for carrying out simpler tasks. As technology firms automate their commoditised service offerings, they do not necessarily need engineers to perform all tasks. Instead, they are increasingly hiring non-engineering graduates for testing software applications and managing computer infrastructure of their clients in order to do more with fewer staff and at lower wages than computer engineers.

From nearly 10% of their current workforce, non-engineering graduates could now account for nearly 20-25 % of the staff at companies such as TCS, Wipro and HCL, over the next one to two years. Multinational rival Cognizant already has almost 20% of its global workforce who are non-engineering graduates. Meanwhile, efforts made by NASSCOM and other educational institutions are expected to improve employability for IT engineers to 30% over next few years. “I wish our institutes were situated inside these IT companies or vice versa. It can help bridge the skill gap,” Kumar says.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 7, 2011

>Indian Parliament Speaker wants separate varsity for special skills

>In between her attempts to break the parliamentary logjam between the Manmohan Singh government and the Opposition over the latters demand for a JPC to probe the 2G spectrum scam and her other duties as the Lok Sabha Speaker, Meira Kumar has taken up with the government an issue very close to her heart establishment of a separate university for providing specialized degrees to craftsmen, artisans and labourers a fast dwindling species.

The Lok Sabha Speaker has been pursuing the issue vigorously with the government. “Their response has been positive, I must say,” Kumar told ET here on Sunday. “The skills performed by artisans, craftsmen and various categories of labourers, such as masons, carpenters and gardeners, had been transmitted from one generation to another orally in a guru-shishya parampara (teacher-disciple tradition),” said Kumar. But it has been noticed that, of late, the younger generation does not want to take these skills up and want to shift to other fields, the Lok Sabha Speaker said. Many of these skills, consequently, Kumar said, were on the verge of extinction. There has been a definite decline in the finish and execution of their products because of a discernible lack of interest among the younger generation, she maintained.

The country, the Lok Sabha Speaker said, was famous all over the world for its art and craft. They are admired everywhere and are highly valued. Their tradition is very old. And we have a wide variety of these crafts and arts we can see their handiwork on wood, twigs, cane, metal, leather, ivory (now banned, of course). They are highly specialized, and aesthetically, very pleasing, she observed.

The country, Kumar said, could not afford to lose them. I have come to the conclusion that in our society, a degree gives a person a stature. But these craftsmen, artisans and labourers don’t get any degree, and hence their stature remains low, the Speaker said. Also, there are no books for imparting training on these skills. There is all the more reason to start a separate, specialized university for them an institution where these skills are taught by master craftsmen and artists and the students are conferred diplomas, or graduate and postgraduate degrees and doctorates, she added.

With the country attaining rapid economic progress, there has been, the Speaker argued, a rapid increase in construction-related activities. While engineers and architects get due recognition, there has been no commensurate increase in the stature of masons, carpenters and other categories of labourers. Most of them come from the downtrodden sections of the society. They should be proportionately rewarded not just in economic terms, but also in terms of respect and recognition, Kumar said. There is a need to give formal training to them. Starting a university for them would go a long way in this direction. Besides, it would also kick-start a revolution by bringing about dignity to labour, she said. To begin with, the government, the Speaker said, could make a start by setting up one university for them. Similar institutions could then be started in all the zones of the country.

Source: The Economic Times, January 10, 2011