Even though India produces more than five lakh engineers annually, only 25 per cent of them are employable in the Information Technology (IT) services sector, while a dismal 3.51 per cent are appropriately trained to be directly deployed on projects, according to NASSCOM, National Employability Report and Aspiring Minds Employability Report. Training costs of organisations are very high due to the fact that students directly hired from campuses are not ready to take on projects from day one. This creates a dual problem for the employers — first a mad rush to grab the best students on campus, which leads a huge competition among organisations to be in the first slot in campus hiring, and second a huge cost borne by them later to groom the graduates on specific skill-sets to bridge the gap between campus and corporate.
Opportunities in employment have increased due to the IT services sector. To ensure smooth transition into corporate cosmos, industry and academic institutes need to focus on bridging the void between campus and corporate.
Existing practices
Current intake in major IT organisations is primarily from three streams: engineering colleges and graduate colleges for technical roles, and business schools for management roles. The preferred method of employer branding in the technical colleges have been mainly through sponsoring festivals, paper writing contests, debate, innovation contests, and others, while in the B-schools it’s through organising seminars by senior management, sponsoring management fests and rolling out tailor-made competitions.
There has been an increasing trend of corporates inviting placement officers for so-called engagement sessions in the hope that they would give a better slot for their organisations during placement. To bridge the campus-to-corporate gap, organisations typically roll out modules in campuses, training both the faculty as well as students in the final year of graduation. This has been pioneered by Wipro and Infosys. All IT organisations also inititate a two to six month classroom training module post hiring to get fresh graduates up to speed with industry practices. Organisations have also tied up with universities to have a re-look at their curriculum and to include industry practices. Innovative practices, like the ‘Practice School Concept’ by BITS Pilani, where students from different disciplines work for six months on a variety of professional activities in the industrial world and are involved in problem solving efforts of direct interest to the host organisations, are few and far between. Companies like ours work on the ‘Finishing School’ model, enabling students to complete their final year project with ‘on-the-job’ experiences.
Proactive measures needed
Having said that, a lot more needs to be done to ensure that the common goal of getting students up to speed with current corporate requirements is achieved. There are many event management organisations that are into corporate engagement. They have sophisticated automated tools that keep students engaged once selected. However, these interventions are only around to ring-fence them within a particular organisation, neither to increase their intrinsic value as responsible employees nor to optimise their technical knowledge base.
Training post appointment is also restricted to few weeks, and some organisations show the carrot of international training. However, this exposure is also restricted to few weeks. The training is just a lip service and does not groom employees in the true sense.
Previously, campus recruits used to be taken seriously and many of them used to be groomed for leadership roles. This focus could begin while they are in academic institutes. However, in recent times, most organisations aim at campus hiring to increase rookie ratio and reduce costs. This turn of focus has dropped engagement to a mere entertainment in many ways. It is time for organisations to take campus hires seriously and share responsibility with academic institutes by providing inputs to the students from day one by being members of board of studies and providing frequent teaching sessions, practical sessions, internships, and rigorous training.
The way ahead
Industry and academia need to be extremely integrated in terms of the objectives that need to be achieved post graduation. Campus recruits should not be seen merely as cost-effective solution to manpower-related issues. Quality of work loses focus when an organisation looks at a rookie ratio only to ensure cost-effectiveness. Collaboration between industry and campus engagement should begin from the first year of graduation. Interest in students on an overall basis should be the key of focus, grooming only your lot should not be the selfish interest!
While organisations need to stop rushing for the coveted first slot on campuses and curb bulk hiring to curtail costs, academia also needs to understand that merely teaching outdated syllabi will produce students with academic degrees, and nothing more. There needs to be a co-operation in terms of updating industry-relevant syllabi, and the industry needs to reach out and supply industry experts and information on latest trends and requirements. Not every student who is good in academics will have the necessarily skill sets to survive in a corporate world. While one can say the art of becoming ‘street smart’ cannot be taught, however, academic institutes need to groom students to face the corporate world. It is necessary to be creative and also compulsory for campus recruits to fathom failures and learn from mistakes. Faculty play a huge role in students’ lives, and, hence, their training and grooming is equally important. Just as students are expected to undertake an internships organisations and employees go ‘back to school’, faculty members are also expected to opt for sabbatical stints in corporate cosmos.
Only with a concerted effort, from both industry and academia, truly employable graduates can be developed!
(Anand Talwar is a Senior Vice-President and Sapna Poti a General Manager at ITC Infotech.)