The overall employability of fresh talent, across professional courses, has increased significantly from 33 per cent in 2014 to 45.6 per cent in 2018.
Engineering, B Pharma, MCA and other focussed professional courses have all seen an increase in employability in the last five years. However, one professional course that has been experiencing a dip in employability is MBA— Master of Business Administration. There has been an exponential increase in the number of MBA colleges in the country. As a consequence, the quality of talent is dropping and that’s a worrying fact.
However, the overall employability amongst the fresh talent has increased significantly in the past five years, from 33 per cent in 2014 to 45.6 per cent in 2018. Focussed vocational courses are creating more job-ready candidates than generic courses. Besides, the courses where practical experiences and internships have been made part of the formal course content are faring better.
The findings are from the India Skills Report 2018 – a joint initiative by PeopleStrong & Wheebox in collaboration with CII. The employability test was spread out to 5200 universities and professional institutions in India, and reached out to more than five lakh students.
An interesting insight from the report is that close to 80 per cent of candidates assessed are keen to explore internship opportunities, as they believe that internship will make them more employable. 85 per cent of the candidates feel that they are not fully equipped with information or guidance to take a conscious and well thought-out career decision.
From the demand side, the study suggests that companies are showing a revival in their hiring intent. As per the India Hiring Intent Survey, organisations across sectors expect 10-15 per cent increase in hiring intent from last year to this year. While retail, banking, financial services and insurance sectors are expecting an increase in the pace of hiring, sectors, such as ITES, software, hardware and IT foresee a moderate change in hiring numbers.