Mismatch……….Management!

Of the total graduate youth population annually, less than 1% is considered employable by the industry. Unfortunately, our educational system fails to equip the students with industry required skills. These students may possess a degree but lack appropriate professional or industrial skills required to be productive in a work environment.

So what is the mismatch?

Highly theoretical courses leading to poor skills and no practical experience in the courses are just the tip of the iceberg! It means that when you come out of regular college you are a fresher in every sense of the word as far as industry knowledge, work ethics, pressure handling and responsibility taking is concerned. Scary! If you put yourself in shoes of an employer who is looking for someone reliable. No wonder then that the fresh graduates from private institutions and foreign universities are given first preference over their local counterparts.

As if this wasn’t enough, peer and parents mess up the minds of our youngsters pretty well too!

For one thing, they keep pushing for the tried and tested, even when it has become redundant. So a youngster would rather waste money, time and energy on something that everyone else in the community is doing instead of trying something new given the lack of support. We have numerous girls working in one-room-community-beauty-parlors earning a fraction of salaries that a retail store would pay, but would they reconsider? No, their correspondence graduation courses and beauty parlor jobs seem safer than a service industry certification.

Knowledge of the English Language is generally minimal and it generally comes with an attitude problem attached i.e. I’m waiting for the right job (read better paying). It is good to be ambitious, but when you still have a lot to learn, wouldn’t getting started be a good idea? If this job doesn’t pay well, next one will.

Management….. :-) Yes I am not here to just crib!

Starting my work here at NIIT Foundation as a placement officer, did give me a dry throat when I realized the above, one by one, through painful shots of experience. But as an organization we firmly believe that the task of assigning and correcting this unfortunate situation is an intricate one, NOT an impossible one!

So we start with the mindset i.e. developing a broader outlook towards their career and mentally preparing them for the challenging jobs once the training is over. While we are at it, we do Parent Teachers meeting/Home visits/ Counseling

to bring about a change in the mindset of the parents as well. And off course the training is industry based.

Little later in the training we introduce Job Shadow Days. It’s like the Industry visit/HR talks where professionals speak to students about the changing environment and what must be done to excel at interviews and jobs. Internship programs come towards the course completion; they are two months on-the-job and totally practical.

Last but not the least regular Pre placement workshop and Career fairs give HR’s feedbacks, allowing the students to plan their career path ahead.

A well known Goethe’s couplets states:

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

We have begun…… the magic is not far either!

Sameer Kumar

NIIT Foundation