Low Employability Skills among Engineering Students in India India is the worlds second largest producer of engineering and

technical graduates. Unfortunately, many of these graduates are not immediately employable (which is not the same as not getting jobs). Several independent studies have highlighted this problem. A recent survey conducted reveals that out of the 360,000 engineering graduates produced by India every year, only 25% of them were employable. It also concluded that only 10% of science, commerce and arts students were employable. Many of Indias top businessmen share this concern. The skills required by any employer are the same whether the employer is in the United Kingdom, the United States or India. A ready-to-deploy graduate is one who is equipped to be deployed on projects and can generate revenue for the company. To bring graduates to a state of ready-todeploy most IT organisations spend around 3-4 months training them at a cost of two lakhs per employee. In tough times like this, that is a cost most companies would like to reduce Therefore, employers are keen for graduates to have developed their awareness and aptitude for transferable skills within higher education. There are fundamental problems at the design level of engineering courses in India. The curricula followed at our universities and colleges are often outdated with hardly any focus on the requirements of the industry. While engineering education is supposed to develop key skills such as problem solving and process manipulation, bulk of learning in our institutions is centred around passing the exams that rely on rote-memorising the content. Also, there is hardly any interaction between industry and academia. Given these factors, the actual quality of technical resources coming out of Indian institutes need not surprise us. To avoid being overlooked by potential employers, students need to focus on developing transferable skills skills that are applicable across industries, such as thinking, behavioural and interaction skills. Students need to be aware and look out for every skill enhancement opportunity that is available inside or outside campuses and make optimum use of the same. To achieve the `adaptability' required for working within different contexts and situations, graduates are now expected to have acquired some degree of competence in a range of transferable skills to enhance their personal development and professional abilities. To meet this demand, students will be required, as part of their course, to demonstrate their communication and team working abilities on more than one occasion; this is in addition to the more technical skills required of their disciplines. Employability skills are very essential in the current global job market. These skills can be termed as soft skills, which are given utmost importance in campus interview. The on-campus recruitment process consists of three or four stages: 1) aptitude test, 2) technical interview, 3) group discussion, and 4) HR interview. During the four stages the candidates technical knowledge, analytical, verbal reasoning, critical

thinking, communication and group skills are assessed and at each stage the unsuccessful candidates are filtered out. The different soft skills required for an engineering graduate to be ready-to deploy are, i) Communicative skills ii) Critical thinking and Problem Solving skills iii) Team work iv) Life-Long Learning & Information Management Skills v) Entrepreneurship skills vi) Ethics, Moral & Professional vii) Leadership skills In the case of Communication Skills the following sub-skills can be taken into account. a) Ability to deliver idea clearly, effectively and with confidence either orally or in writing. b) Ability to practice active listening skills and respond. c) Ability to present clearly and confidently to the audience. Next, critical thinking are also important for job seekers. The sub-skills under this category are: a) Ability to identify and analyze problems in difficult situation and make justifiable evaluation, b) Ability to expand and improve thinking skills such as explanation, analysis and evaluate discussion, c) Ability to find ideas and look for alternative solutions, d) Ability to build a good rapport, interact and work effectively with others. Then Team Work another soft skill which is indispensable for those who would like to work in IT industries. The sub-skills of Teamwork are: a) Ability to understand and play the role of a leader and follower alternatively, b) Ability to recognize and respect others attitude, behavior and beliefs.

The fourth category is Life-Long Learning and information management skills. It includes the sub-skills such as a) Ability to find and manage relevant information from various sources; b) Ability to receive new ideas performs autonomy learning. Entrepreneurship Skill is the fifth of soft skills which is related to the ability of identifying job opportunities. The next category of soft skill is Ethics, moral and professionalism. It includes two sub-skills. They are: a) Ability to understand the economy crisis, environment and social cultural aspects professionally, b) Ability to take decisions related to ethics. The seventh category is Leadership Skills and it is concerned with the ability to lead a project and knowledge of the theories of leadership. Skill shortage remains one of the major constraints to continued growth of the Indian economy. Therefore, engineering education institutions should: (i) seek to improve the skill set of graduates; (ii) recognize the importance of Soft Skills, (iii) refocus the assessments, teaching-learning process, and curricula away from lower-order thinking skills, such as remembering and understanding, toward higher-order skills, such as analyzing and solving engineering problems, as well as creativity; and (iv) interact more with employers to understand the particular demand for skills in that region and sector.