Only 25 % IT graduates readily employable: Nasscom

Harsimran Julka & Pankaj Mishra, ET Bureau Apr 7, 2011, 07.21am IST
DELHI I BANGALORE: At 25, and with a computer science degree from one of the top regional engineering
colleges , Sandesh Kumar considered himself to be the luckiest among all his batch mates when he was picked
by Infosys Technologies last year. But within three months, Kumar realised the initial training at Infosys'
sprawling Mysore campus was getting nowhere. "I actually sucked at everything communications, language
and understanding about some of the latest development tools," Kumar says. "The company was kind enough
to flag early that I might face hurdles ahead and I decided to quit," he adds.

While Kumar's unemployability is an extreme case, of the 550,000 engineering graduates passing out every
year, anywhere between 10% and 25% cannot be readily employed by any technology firm in the country .
Software lobby Nasscom says only 25% of graduates working in IT are readily employable, while it is roughly
15% for back-office jobs. Growing gaps in skills needed for computer science graduates to start coding at the
earliest is nothing new, but India Inc's modest progress in dealing with the problem is what marks the
seriousness of the issue. India's $60-billion outsourcing industry is already spending almost $1 billion a year on
readying these graduates, picked up from different campuses. But only marginal headway has been made with
the percentage of employable engineering graduates moving up by just a per cent over the past six years to
25%.
"I did go to a private institute in Hyderabad for a three months refresher course, but they taught us more of the
same. It didn't seem to help at all," agrees Kumar who joined a multinational tech support centre in Bangalore
last month. While Nasscom believes a quarter of the engineering graduates are unemployable , consulting firm
Aspiring Minds paints a gloomier picture. In an employability study conducted last August, the firm found that
merely 4.22% of engineering graduates are employable in product companies and only 17% in IT services. On
its part, Nasscom says India's large pool of engineers makes the employability percentage look even more
daunting. "Comparison of India's employability percentage with other nations is not fair.
The talent pool in those countries is much smaller, and the quality of education has been much higher. The right
to education bill has just been passed in India, and it will take time for it to show results," says Nasscom vice-
president Sangeeta Gupta. Nasscom has started two common assessment tests, which set a common
benchmark for employability especially for students from tier 2-3 engineering colleges. "The 45-minute
evaluation tests you on analytical, comprehension, writing and verbal skills. If a person is not good in voice,
good analytical skills will get him a job in the BPO function in an IT firm. We have also started the train-the-
trainer programme for universities," she says.
"The percentage of non-engineering graduates in the pool of IT and BPO firms is also rising steadily.
Companies are not complaining of any dearth of talent, as there is a large pool of three million graduates
available to them a year, of which the industry's demand is about 240,000 only per year. We don't see a dearth
for talent in future as well, though there will be competition from other sectors," she adds. Tech employers such
as Adobe, the world's biggest maker of graphic design software, says a stronger coordination between
campuses and companies is needed. "The issue is real but not too much of a glaring problem for us as we go to
the Tier I institutes where the curriculum is uptodate and our experience has been good. But in other technology
schools it is a problem.
The curriculum is stuck in a time warp and there is very limited exposure to the industry," says Jaleel Abdul,
senior director, HR, Adobe Asia-Pacific . "The best practice would be to let students learn from the industry and
have strong university programs. Several of our senior technical team go to colleges as guest faculty and
students come for internships, that helps a lot. As a result of most colleges not being in touch with the actual
requirements, companies have to make a lot of additional investments in training which can be avoided," he
adds. Sanyukta, an engineering student set to graduate next year, says she had tough time finding a course
that taught software testinga growing, multi-billion dollar business for Indian tech firms.
"We need premier institutes to offer such courses, most of my batchmates are doing crash courses in testing
from smaller private institutes," she says. Some tech executives, however, play down the employability issue.
"When you have such a big pool, these challenges will exist and I would say that going forward training will
become core to companies. This will help us realign skills to business needs as and when needed and not wait
for an institute to offer graduates in a particular discipline ," says the CEO of one of the top 10 software
exporters. He requested anonymity because his company is under a silent period.

Apart from investing more in inhouse training, IT companies have also started looking at non-engineering
graduates for carrying out simpler tasks. As technology firms automate their commoditised service offerings,
they do not necessarily need engineers to perform all tasks. Instead, they are increasingly hiring non-
engineering graduates for testing software applications and managing computer infrastructure of their clients in
order to do more with fewer staff and at lower wages than computer engineers. From nearly 10% of their
current workforce, non-engineering graduates could now account for nearly 20-25 % of the staff at companies
such as TCS, Wipro and HCL, over the next one to two years. Multinational rival Cognizant already has almost
20% of its global workforce who are non-engineering graduates. Meanwhile, efforts made by Nasscom and
other educational institutions are expected to improve employability for IT engineers to 30% over next few
years. "I wish our institutes were situated inside these IT companies or vice versa. It can help bridge the skill
gap," Kumar says