Reality Check:Only 18% of Engineering Graduates are Employable!

It is a shocking title, right? Nonetheless, it is true that less than one out of four engineering graduates are employable, according to a survey report. The third edition of the National Employability Report for Engineering Graduates- 2014, as released by a private employability solutions company, released that though 18.33 % of the engineers are employable, out of them 18.09 % actually get a job.

Of the 1.2 lakh candidates surveyed across multiple states, whopping 91.82 % lack programming and algorithm skills, 71.23 % lack soft and cognitive skills, 60 % lack domain skills, 73.63% lack English speaking and comprehension skills and 57.96 % have poor analytical and quantitative skills problems. ‘The low employability among engineering graduates is a cumulative outcome of poor education standards and higher demand of skilled employees, thus creating a drastic skill gap in the country’, said Himanshu Aggarwal, the co- founder and CEO of Aspiring Minds, the company which released the report. This report reveals that corporates look for candidates who have basic skills in order and don’t need much training on being hired. Thus, candidates with lower quality of skills in comparison to basic job requirements are left out in the entire process.

Of the 6 lakh engineers that graduate every year, only 18.43 % of them are employable for the software engineer- IT services roles, while just 3.95 % are appropriately trained to be directly deployed on projects. As per core jobs in mechanical, electronic, electrical and civil jobs are concerned, only a mere 7.49 % are employable.

In contrast to this, 53 % engineers have software role as the most preferred job, while 44 % have core engineering jobs as their preferred role. And this means 97 % engineers want jobs either in software/core engineering. First of all, an economy with a large per cent of unemployable qualified candidates is not only unproductive, but socially dangerous as well. Secondly, there is a large mismatch in aspirations of graduating engineers and their job readiness that can create large-scale dissatisfaction.