Thomas Edison, the world?s greatest inventor, a scientist and businessman, who created the light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera and had 1,093 patents, had no formal education. Home-schooled by his mother and hearing-impaired from early childhood, Edison founded GE, the world?s most successful and enviable industrial enterprise. On his success, he famously said: ?Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration?. Where did he find this persistence?
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not complete college either. Nearer home, Dhirubhai Ambani, too, evaded school, despite being born to a village school teacher. What made them successful? It clearly is not academics. There is some other knowledge, skills and attitude at work.
It is not a revelation that we all require some common sense to employability skills by osmosis in real life; while educational institutions own this responsibility academically, professionally and morally.
In today?s competitive employment market, jobs and roles are described in terms of competencies, which are a combination of behaviours that lead to superior performance in a job. The two major concerns of employers are finding good workers and training them. The skills-gap, which is the difference between the skills needed on the job and those possessed by applicants, is of real concern to managers and business owners looking to hire competent employees.
India currently has 600 million people below 25 years of age, of which 320 million are in schools and colleges. Less than 25% of these are employable due to the skills gap.
Employability skills can be divided into three areas of learning. Knowledge is theory or technical understanding of a subject, the ability to comprehend, apply, analyse, synthesise and evaluate to arrive at solutions. Knowledge plays an essential role as a foundation, the basic building block supporting skills and attitude. Knowledge is what one knows?technical designs, software languages, financial modelling, etc.
Skills move a person from theory (knowledge) to action. To be skilled, one must be able to undertake a task with competence. Skills are learned and repeatable. In short, skills are what one can do with knowledge.
Attitude is receiving and responding to the environment and people; it is the value a person attaches to others. Attitude is a major driver for converting one?s potential into reality. Attitude is how one behaves.
Together, knowledge, skills and attitude provide a platform for a winning and successful career.
Employability skills are not taught. They are learnt. At the under-graduate or post-graduate level, the andragogy (not pedagogy) is experiential training (not teaching). Adults don?t change behaviours because they are ?taught?, but only when they ?experience? its virtues and are convinced about the new set of behaviour or attitude. They have to be internally inspired, not externally motivated. This learning is problem-centric, not content-centric.
This training is fundamentally different from academic teaching.
India still has enough to catch up on ?project-oriented? or ?activity-based? academic learning from blackboard-and-chalk based rote learning that the same teachers are unlikely candidates for training students in an experiential format. This has to be left to expert trainers who have clinical psychology (for soft skills) or speech pathology (for communication skills) backgrounds.
The training is mostly role-play or game-based and does not have much ?theory?. It has takeaways from experiences that are very personalised and become each individual?s learning. Consider topics like positive attitude, time management, EQ, communication skills, goal setting, working in teams, etc? You can?t help but train students through professional trainers.
Our academicians often fall into the classic trap of finding a book in these subjects and use traditional teaching methodology in the classroom. The result: 25% employability. Training is not teaching. Our education system?s emancipation will lie in academia?s self-realisation that we cannot leave employability skills to accidents. This is exactly what employers want.
If most employers valued degrees, they would not host aptitude tests, GDs and personal interviews. Every time I make educators and business leaders fill up a survey, I am not surprised that the top five priorities of both for a student?s future are different. This is the industry-academia gap. Educators rate technical skills at the top. Business leaders rate communication skills at the top. When will the twain meet?
Our nation?s demographic dividend lies in ensuring our youth is put to work. Students seeking admission to institutions of higher learning should stop buying degrees, infrastructure or placements. Instead, they should demand comprehensive learning, including employability skills. Educators must think about employability skills as a shift from teaching to training, from after-thought to proactive action, from discretionary indulgence to mandatory, embedded curriculum.
The author is the founder & CEO of Aspire Human Capital Management
