Dr. S. S. Verma
Employability is the combination of factors and processes which enable people to progress towards or get into employment, to stay in employment and to move on in the workplace. Employability is a concept that has joined the mainstream of individual, human resources and national policy vocabulary. It has been summoned as the means by which individuals can cope with changing employment conditions, organizations can maintain their ability to adapt and succeed and the nation can enhance its competitiveness. For individuals, employability depends on the knowledge, skills and attitudes they possess, the way they use those assets and present them to employers, and the context (e.g. personal circumstances and labour market environment) within which they seek work.
In the era of less population in the country, people even with minimum level of education were easily getting employment. But in the present phase of increasing population with growing education levels, it is becoming tough to secure an employment with changing factors of employability. Presently, with simple school, college or university level education employment chances are very limited. Professional instututes started by the government with a employment gurantee some decades back are now turning the factories of academic certificates just as non-professional educational institues. There are very few organizations which send a hope of transparent chances of employment for an individual. Cost of education, rampat corruption and nepotism at every level will definitely make the process of employability for a common candidate more difficult in general and socio-economically disadvantaged young in particular will face almost impenetrable employability barriers.
With the modernization and globalization of the world, quality education with gurantee of employability has become the need of the hour. There were days when a student after acquiring educational degree was told to “spread your wings, reach out for the stars, believe in yourself & let the world see who you are”. But today, to face the competitive world, along with various pillars of education (i.e., state-of-art infrastructure, learned faculty, high-tech academic system and excellent administrative support) for the overall development of the students there is a great need of gurantee of employability in the presently rapidly changing scenario of competition. For most of our young people, the country has a more or less do-it-yourself system for making the transition from school to work. What they learned in school is not adequately related to what they need to know to succeed after leaving school. Government policy is aimed more at producing more individuals looking to enter the job market; development and accreditation of knowledge and vocational skills than at the ‘softer’ skills and attitudes; and more towrds demonstration of assets than their deployment.
Gone are the days when students were given education to prepare themselves for employability but now employability has to be an integral part of education. Institutions must not be committed only to quality education based on human values and relevant to modern time requirements but with a gurantee of employability.. For a better career, youth of today well supported by their parents are leaving no stone unturned in this direction. They are happily opting for private instituions which are doing much better in this regard as compared to government run institutions due to any reasons which is proving a milestone in attracting the students for enrollment in such institutions. Realizing the present situation, top professional institutions in the country have launced certain new packages towards employability prospects of their students which may compete with any rapid and gradual change in employment sector. To increase the employability of engineering graduates, finishing schools will be set up at seven National Institutes of Technology (NIT), besides IIT-Roorkee. These finishing schools would focus on technical and soft skills with available infrastructure for 8-10 weeks during the summers.
Employability is a two-sided equation and many individuals need various forms of support to overcome the physical and mental barriers to learning and development. Employability is not just about vocational and academic skills. Individuals need relevant and usable labour market information to help them make informed decisions about the labour market options available to them. They may also need support to realise when such information would be useful, and to interpret that information and turn it into result. No responsibility is taken up in most of the government run professional institutes to make sure the employability of its pass out students. Admminstartion has all the schemes on papers but without any serious effort to implement those. Moreover, the teachers are making all the excuses to shun their responsibility towards this.
Discussions on the need for educational reform and restructuring typically include concern about the gap between the skill requirements for entry-level employment and the skill levels of entry-level job applicants. Employers’ dissatisfaction with young job applicants is not primarily due to inadequate technical knowledge or skill but due to the lack of employability skills. Business and industry representatives express considerable dissatisfaction with the general level of preparedness of prospective entry-level employees. More than half our young people leave school without the knowledge or foundation required to find and hold a good job.
However, there continue to be many teachers and administrators who believe that students will pick up these employability skills and abilities incidentally in the course of growing up and being in the public schools. But, the research on the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching employability skills indicates that these skills are best learned when they are included among instructional goals and explicitly taught. Thus, employability skills can be taught and are important to teach. Democratic instructional approaches are superior to indoctrinational approaches for imparting employability skills to students.
Role of policymakers:
* Establish as a top-priority national goal that every student should complete education possessing sufficient employability skills to earn a decent living
* Require that all federally funded vocational preparation programs include components for teaching employability skills
* Encourage and support continued experimentation with and learning from diverse programs linking schools, employers, and young people
Role of Teachers:
* Reinforce to students that employers value basic, higher-order, and affective employability skills highly-even more highly than job-specific technical skills
* Communicate to students that they have the ability to perform tasks successfully and that they are expected to do so; provide monitoring and encouragement to help them achieve success
* Express work values through classroom instruction asking attention to quality, thoroughness, and a positive attitude
* Utilize democratic instructional strategies such as role playing/simulation, problem-solving exercises, and group discussion with students.
* Monitor and support students’ work as a consultant or master craftsman would, relating to them as intelligent, promising employees and providing them guidance and feedback
The concept of employability has been in the literature for many years but current interest has been driven by the changing nature of public employment policy, with increasing emphasis being given to skills-based solutions to economic competition, and work-based solutions to social deprivation. There is a strong ethical and practical imperative facing all of us who help prepare people for the job market to ensure that our students are well-prepared to enter working situations. As industry expands and more companies enter the country, it is felt that people do not have the adequate skills to take on the jobs that will be on offer. In the times to come, employability will be the issue, not jobs. Thus, carefully structured and thoughtfully conceived, employability skill development will enable all individuals-young and old-to develop needed self-confidence and motivation, not only towards employability but also to meet successfully the challenges of work, to survive, and-most important-to flourish.
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