Employability Quotient, Not College Name be the New Hiring Criteria

"Engineering colleges in our country have been growing at 20 per cent a year. ….despite the
increase in number of colleges, the competition for acquiring fresh talent every year is so heated
that it gives an impression that resources are really scarce….”, Azim Premji

During the fiscal year 2012-2013, the IT-ITeS industry is expected to create employment
opportunities for about 200,000 individuals. There are more than 2500 engineering colleges in
India, of which 100 are tier I, 150 odd are tier II and rest are tier III colleges. A typical large IT
company in India, which makes 15,000+ offers to freshers every year would typically restrict to
visiting to 100-125 odd colleges for recruitment. This creates a unique paradox because on one
hand we have the majority of IT/ITES companies that are competing fiercely to book the best
slot in top 15% campuses during the placement season, and complaining against the
unavailability of talent. While on the other hand the rest of 85% campuses can provide no
employment opportunities to their talented pool. The primary reason for this demand supply
mismatch is because companies don’t have access to the 2500 colleges and it will be too
expensive an affair to visit each of these colleges individually.

While IT/ITeS companies look frantically in all directions to solve their manpower requirements
and growing attrition rates, the fact remains that they are actually able to tap into only a limited
section of the talent pool available in the country. Outside the realm of recruitment events in Tier
I colleges, lies a huge untapped pool of talent which, if given proper orientation, could give the
best Tier I colleges a run for their money. According to the National Employability Report on 1

Technical Graduates, published by Aspiring Minds, 50% of the IT Services employable

Technical graduates are in the top 30% of colleges(rank wise) while the rest 50% employable
students are in the bottom 70% of colleges(rank wise). The number gap increases further for IT
Product employability percentage

Top 30 percentile Rest of the campuses

campuses
(~1750 colleges)
(~750 colleges)
IT Services Employability 28% 12%

Percent Employable Pool 50% 50%

IT Product Employability 5.81% 0.97%

Percent Employable Pool 72% 28%

Table 1: Top 30 percentile campuses vs. the rest

The National Employability Report also indicates that average employability in colleges in the
top 30 percentile (around 750 colleges) is 28%, whereas it is around 12% for the rest of the
colleges. This implies that almost an equal number of employable candidates are there in the top
750 campuses as compared to the rest. Consider that no IT company in India has a campus
recruitment program beyond the top 750 campuses, which shows that almost half of the
employable pool, i.e., around 50,000 employable candidates in the country, is invisible to
recruiters. Similarly for IT product companies, almost 28% of the available talent is unavailable.
This artificial shrinkage of supply leads to multiple problems for all stakeholder i.e. corporates,
campuses, students and country as a whole:

Companies:

 Harder to find and hire employable candidates

 Limited visible pool demands higher salaries
 High attrition rates

Campuses/ Students

 The Tier II and Tier III colleges are unable to find suitable opportunities for their talented
students. This leads to a trickledown effect for all students who are de-motivated and lose
their ambition to get a good job.

Society

 A country can only prosper when all its youth are employable as well as employed.
Currently there is a mismatch situation where there are vacancies in companies are
unemployment in youth.

The major reason why companies shy away from visiting Tier II and Tier III colleges is because
of high costs involved. As Mr. Bhaskar Das, VP HR, Cognizant India aptly puts it, "For reasons
of cost of search, we limit ourselves to 150 premier institutions across India. But extremely good
talent also resides outside these institutions…" . If you consider the employability graph for IT
Services companies, the best of colleges have employability as high as 50%, whereas the bottom
30 percentile colleges have employability of less than 10%. Around only 35% colleges have
employability more than the average figure of 17%, whereas the majority (65% colleges) has it
close to or lower than 17%. This clearly shows that there are a small number of colleges with
very high employability followed by a high number of colleges with very low employability.
Thus, even though the mean employability is ~17%, the median employability is much lower.
The trend would only get steeper for IT product companies.
Figure 1: Employability Percentage of Students across Colleges for IT Services Companies

Hence we can conclude that the current situation will not work in future as job demand grows
higher and higher. Companies have to start considering Tier II and Tier III campuses to meet
their needs. The need of the day is a common platform where the entire gamut of students can be
brought together under one roof so that recruitment becomes standardized and cost effective. The
employability quotient assessed by a common test, and not college name of a candidate should
be highlighted to the recruiter. This common test will ensure that Offer Letters are given on the
basis of standardized benchmarks on the candidate’s competencies and skills and eliminate all
human bias based on region, background, college rank etc.

The standardized test would make sure that equal opportunity is given to every candidate by
exposing the student strengths to employers and helping them get the deserved job. This would
help bridge the gap that exists between deserving candidates and open vacancies in companies.
Corporates would get much better access to talent across nation and able to conduct recruitment
in much more standardized and cost effectively. The Tier II and Tier III colleges will also be able
to provide opportunities to deserving students, thus reinforcing the belief amongst students that
nothing but hard work and sincerity are the key to a successful career. Thus this common
platform will play a crucial part in overall development of education and employment in the
society.

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[Link] National Employability Report by Aspiring Minds is based on a sample of more than
55,000 engineering students from 250+ engineering colleges across multiple Indian states. All
these candidates graduated in 2011. The analysis and findings of this report are based on the
results of these students on AMCAT: Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test, which is India’s
largest and only standardized employability test. Employability has been quantified based on the
benchmarking studies done at various companies in different sectors by Aspiring Minds. The
grading on colleges was done on parameters such as the industry's perception of the college, peer
review, average annual graduation score, number of campus interviews and number of students
placed.
I am always pained by Human Resources people asking for “a seat at the
table”. I have never seen any other function in the business making the same demand of their
colleagues. Ever heard of a Finance person asking for a seat at the table? Ever heard someone
banging on the door demanding to be let in? Well, that’s what it sounds like when someone says,
“HR has earned a seat at the table”. How about designing the party where you want to be
invited? As long as someone … anyone else, can do your job half as well as you do, you stand
the chance of not being invited to the party. You need to ensure that the key ingredient of the
party is what you will bring in. If it is a dance party, bring in the music and be the DJ. You will
have people pleading to have you over early so the fun can begin.

In addition to having deep skill of all aspects of managing people and traditional areas of
specialization such as Talent Management, Rewards Management etc, HR professionals will
have to supplement these with some new areas of expertise. Here are five new areas I
recommend building your skills in. This is not just for HR people but for anyone who wants to
build their people skills for the workplace of the future.

a) Market Research: The ability to mine data and generate insights will be a key skill. The
insights should drive all people decisions of the organization. Think of the amount of effort that
goes into understanding what the customer wants. Imagine the returns you would get if you put
the same rigor in mining insights about your employees.

b) Technology: Comfort with technology will help professionals build their digital literacy. To
be able to build a strong employer brand that is attractive to the current and potential employee
pool globally, you will have to understand the possibilities that technology offers and see how
you can leverage it. Millennials learn better through video. How about creating nifty videos of
your ideas? That does not mean getting a professional agency to do it. That is so twentieth
century!

c) Financial Savvy & Humane Savvy: You will need to understand the financial implications
of your choices. The implementation of the ideas will need to be done in a humane fashion. This
is no longer a contradiction. It is the way in which business is expected to operate. While the
decision has to be financially viable and good for the long term health of the business, the leaders
of the future workplace will keep the human element in mind. How would your colleagues rate
you on these?

d) Creative Communication: The next decade will see a huge number of people under thirty
being added to the global workforce. Between 2010-2030, India will add 241 Million people in
working-age population; Brazil will add around 18 million, China will add 10 million people
during the same time. Think of this generation as one that speaks a foreign language that you do
not know. That is exactly the communication challenge of working in a multi-generational work
environment. You have to learn to speak many languages. Some people find it hard to learn
languages. This is a mindset that takes time to develop. The best time to start doing that is now.

e) Governance: You will need to build a deeper understanding of legal frameworks not just
from the point of laws relating to employment, but also about Corporate Governance, Taxes,
Sustainability etc that have so far been left to the legal department to figure out. The global
leaders will need to learn at least the basics of the legal framework of doing business in a country
and also know the basics of employment laws that operate. I am assuming you know these for
the country you operate out of. How many others countries would fall in that category?

How well would you say you currently stack up against these areas? How would your colleagues
rate you on these?

6/6
An even more alarming fact is that one third of this group is unfit for
employment, even with external intervention in the form of training. And these
findings are about students who have done well academically; with at least 60%
marks, said the PurpleLeap IRIX (Industry Readiness Index) survey.

The findings of the study poses a big challenge for small and medium sized
companies that straddle the need to increase capacity with the training
imperative.

The study also points to the need for systematic intervention to prevent the
possible failure of the technical education system in the country.

The PurpleLeap IRIX (Industry Readiness Index) survey is based on the IRIX
employability–readiness test undertaken by students across the country.

The company-neutral IRIX test, executed on the Pearson VUE platform, is

accepted by diverse organizations for entry level talent, and helps them shortlist
from the ‘pre-assessed’ pool of candidates across India.

As many as 34000 students from 198 colleges, across the country, took this test
which forms the basis of this survey. The criterion to qualify for the test was an
academic score of at least 60%.

Commenting on the findings of the study, Mr. Amit Bansal, CEO, PurpleLeap
said, ‘Our country’s growth will depend on developing a wider and deeper pool
of skilled talent. In the present economic and employment scenario, it is
important that engineering education should provide students with the skills and
knowledge to be employable. A concerted and combined effort between colleges,
corporate and training institutions is needed to address the prevalent
employability matrix. ”.

Levels of generic and technical abilities points to high need for interventional
training:

The IRIX study looks into the reasons why most organizations usually have to
spend 3 to 4 months on technical training to make these students workplace
ready.

To be employed, as much as half of the assessed group requires intervention in

the form of training, not only in technical skills, but in generic skills as well.
While the latter is an aggregate of skills in communication, problem solving and
programming ability, the former is based on the ability to apply knowledge in
their respective domains.

A worrying statistic is that among generic ability skills, analytical ability

(considered ‘natural’ for engineering students) is the biggest concern area.
(Analytical ability indicated the measure of logical and analytical reasoning).

The IRIX study reveals that 62% of the students do not meet the requirements
on the problem solving /analytical skills, challenging the popular notion that
engineering students are naturally good at these things.

Over 50% of the students have scored less than 25% in problem solving, making
them fall in the ‘hard-to-train’ segment. Lack of adequate problem solving skills
is one of the biggest gaps leading to students not getting enough technical jobs in
the industry and in many cases having to settle for ‘non-technical’ roles, after an
engineering education.

On technical skills assessment, the study shows that over 58% of the students do
not meet the employability criteria on technical skills for the IT industry, the
largest employer of engineering graduates in the country.

Share of employable talent is equal to the total talent pool in tier 1 engineering
colleges:

However, the only silver lining in this situation is that the share of readily
deployable talent in these tier 2/3/4 colleges is equal to the total talent pool in tier
1 engineering colleges.

Moreover, the number of candidates that can find employment with successful
interventional training is four times in tier 2/3/4 colleges than that of the tier 1
talent pool, pointing to a sufficient talent pool that can be engaged with training.

Predictability of finding deployable talent across states:

In a bid to overcome the challenge in the predictability of finding this employable

talent pool across these colleges, the IRIX study provides some pointers.

Colleges across West Bengal and Rajasthan showed the highest scores in generic
abilities, with Tamil Nadu colleges producing the lowest scores.
Rajasthan colleges also produced high scores in technical abilities, while Madhya
Pradesh showed the lowest scores.

PurpleLeap, a Pearson-Educomp company, is a leader in the entry level talent

managem

in what should serve as a wake-up call to the state's education system, a national-level
assessment has placed Tamil Nadu's engineering graduates as 'least employable'.

The recently released National Employability Report (NER) 2011, compiled by a private
employability assessment company 'Aspiring Minds', says only 10 per cent of engineering
graduates in Tamil Nadu recruited by information technology firms are actually employable. The
conclusions are based on a survey conducted across 16 States.

National figures are none too impressive either. "Even though India produces more than five lakh
engineers annually, only 17.45 per cent of them are employable for the IT services sector, while
only a miniscule 3.51 per cent are appropriately trained to be directly deployed on projects.
Further, only 2.68 per cent are employable in IT product companies, which require greater
understanding of computer science and algorithms," the report says.

Commenting on the dismal show by Tamil Nadu, one of the State's respected academicians and
former Anna University Vice Chancellor, Professor M Anandakrishnan says the "scandalous"
higher education system is to blame.

"In private engineering colleges students are in essence sent to 'coaching centres' where they are
‘coached’ or ‘trained’ to pass the examination based on the syllabi with no additional ability or
qualification," explains Anandakrishnan, who currently heads the Board of Governors, IIT-
Kanpur.

"The issue is that post-secondary education today focuses on syllabi alone and industries seek
beyond what a syllabus is capable of teaching - like communication and creative skills, and team
spirit. Most colleges do not pay attention to anything other than the syllabus," he adds.

Surprisingly, breaking stereotypes, the NER has rated the employability quotient of engineering
graduates Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand the highest. Delhi has emerged as a hub with high
standards of education at all levels, attracting the best minds from across the country.

While Bihar–Jharkhand may seem paradoxical, one can understand this trend by the high 'self-
selection effect'. Bihar and Jharkhand, put together, have around 35 engineering colleges as
compared to 70-80 engineering colleges in any other similar size state. This leads to a fierce
competition among education and only the best end up getting into engineering campuses, the
majority of which are run by the government," the report says.
Only 25 % IT graduates readily employable: Nasscom
Harsimran Julka & Pankaj Mishra, ET Bureau Apr 7, 2011, 07.21am IST

Tags:

 Software|
 Reorganization|
 Nasscom|
 IT|
 Infosys Technologies|
 India Inc â??|
 hyderabad|
 Delhi|
 BPO|
 Bangalore

DELHI I BANGALORE: 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.

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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 $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 uptodate and our experience has been good. But in other technology schools it
is a problem.