How does an employer choose the right person

Employability Vs Our Attitude

How does an employer choose the right person from thousands of fresher applicants all with the same class of degrees are purely based on his or her employability? They say “we recruit for the attitude and then train them for skills”.

After being recruited, employers want Engineers, MBAs as well as other graduates and post graduates who can hit the ground running, adding value soon after they start working. They also seek high level technical skills and domain knowledge as well as high degrees of capabilities such as teamwork, leadership, problem solving, decision making, communication, conflict resolution and finally to add value.

Leaving college or university with a good degree is a pre-requisite in the employment market, but this alone is not enough to secure a first job or to retain and grow in professional career.

It is true that institutions and universities in India do impart high quality education. What is missing though is the lack of systematic approach in employability skill development and building on whatever education one receives that’s essential to help land and retain jobs.

Each year, India contributes almost twice the number of engineers brought out by the US and a little less than twice of all that Europe brings out. It is great to note that India has one of the world’s largest most qualified pools of technical manpower. However, when we look at the employability factor, we are far behind.

The McKinsey Global Institute study on emerging global talent market has pointed out that the multinational companies in India find less than 25% of the engineering students and 10% of other   graduates and post graduates who graduate every year as falling in the ‘employable’ category. Statistics show that at this rate, India is certain to face a ‘talent gap’ of more than 5 million by 2012.

Whom to blame for this and who will correct them? Is it the Indian education system, universities, institutions, academicians or ourselves? The question is how these 25% of the engineering graduates and 10% of the other graduates and postgraduates are employable?

Nobody is born with employability skills. Individuals develop them in themselves over a period of time with the help of their own initiative, learning abilities and being open to improve. Many of the unemployables do not feel that they need to change due to their mindset and many feel that high scores in the exams are enough to be successful in life but the real story is different.

During the campus placements we often experience students with very average merit and marks receive early placements while meritorious students with high marks are being rejected by the companies. Currently, there are 500 million jobs in India and as much as 92% of these jobs are skill based, 7% are knowledge based and 1% both knowledge and skill based. It is estimated that about 90 million jobs will be created in the next 5 years of which over 50% are expected to be in the service industry. It is evident that freshers with some amount of skills and right attitude will have lot of job opportunities.

The major problem area among most of the freshers is in their CVs and Cover letter. I often come across freshers complaining about not receiving interview calls. In most of the cases, its the unimpressive CV and cover letter, and in many cases there is no cover letter!

Read further : http://www.freshersworld.com/blogs/post/10/07/15/Employability-Vs-Our-Attitude