'These are the two core skill sets that are required for any job, in any profession.'
It was reported that in 2024, employability of Indian engineering graduates was about 64%, which was an increase from the 57% in 2023.
If this looks like good news, another report says, one in every two engineers is unemployed in India.
Jaideep Kewalramani, Head of Employability and COO at Teamlease EdTech. discusses the shocking findings of a recent study conducted by Teamlease Degree Apprenticeship to Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier.
Your recent study says only 10% of the 1.5 million engineers are expected to get employed this year. Is this not a very alarming scenario?
Yes, it is. We need to look at it from the macro level perspective and also from the employer's perspective.
From the macro perspective, there is a headwind going on in the tech space. Industries are re-orienting themselves to new realities.
It has become a big problem if you look at graduates from the readiness to be employed.
In fact, it has reached mega proportions that organisations are starting to say that any engineering graduate who is coming out of the college is practically unemployable.
Therefore, they say they need to make a lot of investment to give them the skills.
For example, Infosys has a mega campus in Mysore where they train fresh engineers for three months through a residential programme.
This is the magnitude of the problem. So, we have to look at it from both perspectives.
But academia and students need to focus on the skills that will help students deployable from day one onwards.
For the last two, three decades, I have been hearing those from the industry complaining about the huge gap that exists between the skills fresh graduates have and what the industry needs.
If this is the case, why is it that the industry is not partnering with various universities to make the fresh graduates employable?
I am not talking about the IITs but other colleges and universities.
If you look at the kind of partnership that is happening between industry and academia, it is only lip service.
Most of the industry-academia engagement is limited to some guest lectures, summer placements or internships. This is not going to make students employable from day one.
What is needed is work integrated degree programmes where the student enrols in a university for a degree and parallelly works with an organisation as an apprentice.
So, by the time the student finishes the course, he or she will have the degree as well as work experience. This makes him employable from day one.
The other most important thing is, universities will have to partner with the industry to develop and execute the curriculum.
So, when the design process starts with the industry, and the industry is part of the curriculum execution process, results will start coming.
It is well known that what students learn in colleges is not what the industry wants, and the curriculum is outdated...
Yes. You will see that the traditional curriculum has been designed solely by academicians which basically covers the fundamental principles.
Of course, fundamentals are extremely important.
But it does not bring in what is being practised by the industry today, or what is being discussed in the boardrooms for future planning.
For example, when the boardrooms first started discussing Industry 4.0, the academia was nowhere ready even on a theoretical concept basis.
When Industry 4.0 caught the grip, then the academia started realising that they needed Industry 4.0.
It would have been better if the industry was part of the entire design program. Then, maybe the students would have been ready about Industry 4.0 by the time they are in their fourth year.
Today, we are talking about AI, Design Thinking, etc. If these concepts were made available to the academia from day one, we didn't have to wait for such a long time for the results to show.
Who do you blame for this situation? Ultimately, the sufferers are the students....
I don't think anyone is to be blamed. What is required is more forward thinking.
It is not that nobody is trying. All the four entities -- academia, students, industry and the government -- are trying to bring in changes. And we are the fifth pillar in this.
We have to see how quickly we can accelerate and innovate with new solutions so that we can provide more opportunities for the students.
And students also need to raise their awareness rather than simply chase traditional programs. They must be open to innovation.
Academia also needs to change their outlook. Now, the focus of most of them is only on placements.
NASSCOM said the other day that India's IT sector needed over 1 million engineers, but with advanced skills.... So, a partnership will be mutually beneficial...
Nobody is denying that. It is just that how quickly can this realisation come to both the industry and academia. They have to work on joint solutions.
What is needed is, the rate of change needs to be very rapid. You can't wait for years for a new idea to reach the academia.
We see new ideas, new products and new innovations every six months in the industry.
We did the Employability study which we do periodically to monitor the employment situation continuously.
This time, the focus was on how Industry 4.0, AI, Digital, global headwinds, etc are changing the dynamics.
Where do we stand in these new focal areas when you look at it from the quality of students' perspective?
These are emerging areas. From the academia-industry perspective, we are once again witnessing the same situation which we saw earlier.
If we don't capture very quickly, once again we will be pushed behind, and we will miss the bus.
But there is a growing recognition. That's why we are seeing many in the academia and students ready to embrace the integrated model of studies with apprenticeship. We ourselves are aware of over a lakh students embracing this programme.
The situation today is such that in all the streams whether it is engineering, science or faculty, we must incorporate the understanding of what's happening in the world of AI.
Every business has become a tech business now.
All of them do not require the knowledge of coding but they have to understand how technology works and how they can use technology for their benefit.
It will be very useful if you have subjects for AI, Industry 4.0, or Digital, like you have computer science as a general subject.
This shouldn't be confined to just higher education. It can be part of the early education as well.
Is it because there is no employment or because the fresh engineers are unemployable that only 10% of the 1.5 million engineers are expected to get employed this year?
The talent demand in the industry is enormous. It may be muted in certain industries because of the headwinds or because of other situations. It is only cyclical.
But the larger problem lies with the employability issue.
Employability is the burning issue India faces now unlike the early 70s when unemployment was the biggest problem.
The situation today is, there are more jobs chasing fewer people. But you need talent, and you need skills.
You need the ability to stay in a job. This is another challenge the industry is facing.
You also need the ability to move. Mobility is a big issue today. For example, you can't give job to a person who is not willing to leave his home. People migrate to where jobs are.
What advice will you give the young engineers who are looking for jobs? You said earlier that there are more jobs but there are fewer people with skills...
- You need to gain real world experience even while studying. Internships will only give you experience for a few weeks. So, you need to look at long- term apprenticeship where you spend longer period in an organisation. This is how you get the real-world experience while you are studying.
- You need to have the mindset of life-long learning.
- You need to look at building careers and not just jobs which requires mobility, staying with an organisation and building a path.
- Embrace AI. Embrace Digital. Because these are the two core skill sets that are required for any job, in any profession. Obviously, a few years later, you may encounter different areas you need to focus on.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
