Employable?

Posted by Ninad on November 13, 2009 under All Posts | 7 Comments to Read

Recently, the State Bank of India advertised for 11,000 clerical posts. It received a staggering 3.4 million applications!

With roughly 300 applications for every vacancy, SBI is now planning to conduct exams in 83 centres over 6 sessions. This exercise is estimated to cost around Rs. 560m (approx. USD 13m), which will be recovered from the applicants.

Although the minimum qualification for the job is Class 12, many of the applicants are engineers and MBAs.

There have been many reports which suggest that only one in four graduates from colleges in India is employable. A NASSCOM study also concluded that most of the 400,000 engineers who graduate every year do not have required technical skills or fluency in English.

So, what is the solution?

Clearly, a university graduation in India is not enough to make a student employable. A lot more needs to be done.

A student needs to continually add skills in addition to his university studies. These could be in the form of learning IT skills or even learning communication and presentation skills.

Summer internship with companies will also help students to get the relevant industry experience during their vacations.

In addition, a proper vocational experience will help a student to become truly professional. In the Western countries, more than half the students who graduate have vocational experience. In India, it is in single digits.

Unless and until a student graduating from a University in India gets a holistic experience, he will not become employable. Till such time, we will continue to see millions apply for jobs in State Bank of India, for which they are clearly over-qualified.