There is a thought-provoking article(requires registration) today on the New york times written by Somini Sengupta. It looks at the current skills gap being experienced by technology companies in India and and the quality of engineering grads being produced by Indian colleges. The facts are eye-opening: While India produces more than 400,000 engineers a year, only 1 in 4 is considered hire worth by these companies. Obviously the other three graduates are not making the cut which leads up to the skills shortage.
Somini addresses some key issues in the article
- Hiring is showing no pace of slowing down. Technology companies expect to double their hiring in the next four years. ICICI is planning to add 40,000 workers in the next three years.
- Companies are expanding their Campus recruitment colleges and are now spanning beyond first and second tier schools.
- Technology firms are placing more emphasis on soft skills rather than just looking at a candidate’s technical skills.
- Special institutes are now cropping up to help candidates improve their communication and creative thinking abilities
- India is considering allowing private equity investment in the higher education sector.
I think this article needs to be a wake up call not only to the education ministry but also to colleges churning out these graduates. While hiring professors with a Phd may not be possible overnight, colleges can take simple steps towards improving their candidate’s marketability. Some of them may be starting in-house courses on business english and encouraging group discussions. Indian colleges should also learn from their american counterparts in the sense that they need to encourage students to participate actively in the open source movement.Maybe even adopt a few open source project’s themselves.
At CampusChai, our vision is to reduce this gap. We will be able to provide colleges a platform to showcase their abilities and track important metrics in campus recruitment. A lot the graduates are half finished products because colleges do not have a platform to collect aggregated placement data and use that info. We believe that colleges that use CampusChai will have access to this data and better equip their students to meet industry demands. Somini’s article ends on a sad note for Mr. Rangaswamy, the founder of a college. The reason being that TCS decides not to recruit at his college. With CampusChai at his side, Mr. Rangaswamy might just finish his next NYT appearance on a happy note 
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