NATIONAL EMPLOYABILITY CONCLAVE

A haunting challenge in front of both Academia and the corporates in today’s scenario is the fact that Engineering Graduates are increasing every year but the employability amongst them is decreasing. The academia is struggling with it in order to provide right resources to the corporates and the industry people are struggling with it as they do not get the right talent amongst the present generation to fill the positions vacant.

Keeping the same challenge in mind, Aspiring Minds conducted a ‘National Employability Conclave” at Hotel Sheraton, Saket, New Delhi on January 15th, 2015. Ms. Prachi Agarwal from Corporate Resource Cell of Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida represented the college. This unique initiative of Aspiring Minds has been an yearly event since 2012.

Aspiring Minds Assessment Private Limited is an Indian "Employability Evaluation and Certification company", headquartered in Gurgaon with an office in Bangalore and a pan-Indian operational presence.

Aspiring Minds developed the employability test– Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test or AMCAT. Graduates and students can take this test to present a picture of their skills and abilities to the companies. Companies can hire the candidates directly from the database or from Aspiring Minds’ Assessment service. Some of the esteemed organization associated with them are Lava Mobiles, Aricent Group, Cognizant, Infosys etc.

The panelists in the discussion forum were:-

1. Mr. Sachin Khurana, AVP-HCM, OSSCube Solutions

2. Mr. Sachin Sharma, Head-Talent Acquistion, Lava International Ltd.

3. Ms. Megha Saluja, People Manager, Frankly.me

4. Mr. Farhan- TEAM manager- Sudoku.

5. Mr. Varun Aggarwal- CEO and Founder- Aspiring Minds

The session started at 11:00 AM with a brief introduction of the panelists by TEAM Aspiring Minds and a welcome note for the participants.

The first panelist to present his views was Mr. Sachin Khurana, AVP-HCM, OSSCube Solutions. He thanked and congratulated Aspiring Minds for their unique vision and idea and the endeavor to bring the probation and training period to 0 months. He stated that the bygone year of 2014 was the year of small and medium scales enterprises. 80% jobs in the past year was created by these upcoming SMEs. He stated that it is “The PEOPLE’ which is a unique characteristic of the OSS group. People issues are very fragile and must be handled with care. They are the most sensitive matter any organization can have, even more sensitive than the financial matters. These people matters are directly or indirectly related to the hiring of fresher’s as well. Once the new intern or trainee is hired by the organization and he/ she completes the training period, the project manager is still very reluctant to take them on board as they are not very confident of putting them on live projects. This is the problem of employability.

As the intern is not put on the live project, he becomes inpatient and issues crop up. As a result, the next year, the company becomes very reluctant in absorbing the freshers, thus cutting on the hiring part.

The next in the line was Ms. Megha Saluja- People Manager, Frankly.me. This is a unique idea, first of its type to bring the celebrities and the fans together. This site if officially the first social networking site to be partnered with Aam Aadmi Party for Delhi 2015 elections. She also laid emphasis on the fact of employability. She expressed concern on the fact that out of 8 lakh engineers passing out every year only 8% are employable. She stated that the rejection rate of the companies is very high not because of the fact that the student not been technically sound, but not been right attitude wise. She added RIGHT ATTITUDE; RIGHT OUTLOOK is the call of the day. Organizations want genuine people who take the organizations as their own baby and not act like a baby sitter. The call of the day is LEARN, UNLEARN AND RELEARN.

Mr. Farhan TEAM manager- Sudoku said that the gift vouchers of Sudoku is just a fraction of the business the company has. They follow the buzz word of WPD which is Workforce planning and Deployment. There is a unique method which the organization follows to know the psychology of the people being hired. They check the face book and the linkedin profile of the person hired to gauge their mental and psychometric effect. Just like Ms. Megha Saluja he stressed on the fact of right attitude of the employees. The basics of the engineering studied must be very strong for the students and must be revised thoroughly.

Mr. Varun Aggarwal- CEO and Founder Aspiring Minds stated that MOOCS- Massive open online courses are the call of the day now. He told the fact that Aspiring Minds is the 3rd largest certified employability employer on Linkedin. The skills of the students must be matched with the job irrespective of the fact whether or not the student went to the college on not. He told the audience that Aspiring Minds is transferring ides to the West. There was no concept of Employability Test in the US and when initiated about this ides people at the west were quite impressed. Every problem must be linked to real world problems and the solution must be designed keeping in the mind the consequences in the real world.

He stated that the 5 things mandatory to be in every student are-

• English

• Critical thinking

• Attitude

• Way to give feedback

• Technical coding

The next in the line was the question answer section between the academia and the industry. The event concluded at 02:00 PM with the networking lunch.