Priti Vyas
Abstract:
The progress of industrialization, rapid technological developments and adaptation of sophisticated technology by industries has resulted in a mismatch between requirements of industry and the products of engineering institutions. As such the technical education has to face many challenges and the quality revolution, therefore, assumes tremendous importance in the highly competitive world. In this increasingly globalized world and the internationalized nature of the workplaces, the young engineering students of India are found short of many skills and their chief deficiencies are identified in the areas of soft skills. Over the past few years there has been a growing awareness for the need of soft skills development among the academia and the corporate. Indeed, many institutes have also introduced a component of soft skills in the curricula. But these initiatives are a proverbial drop in the ocean as the most haven’t had the desired impact. One now needs to review the situation and develop strategies to overcome these problems without undermining the importance of technical skills. Thus, this paper attempts to research and identify skill sets and their right mix needed for sustainable employability of engineering graduates as the technical institutional also have to play a key role in promoting national well being and socio-economic prosperity of the country.
Key Words: Stride, deficiencies, soft skills, sustainable, employability, human capital
Introduction
With the rapid expansion of ISO: 9000 and economic liberalization in our country it has become imperative that in order to be competitive in the national as well as in the international market the engineering education system must be ready to accept the challenges of the 21st century. There has been a considerable expansion of technical education in India making availability more than demand; each institute thus has no choice but to improve the quality of their product. Amidst all this there is a need to assess the relevancy of academic output from higher academic institutions to the industry especially in the country like India. Every year approx 2.5 million graduates are being produced by the academic institutions and most of them are being absorbed by the industries at various cadres as rungs to channelize the wheel of our economy. [1] With the changing times, the face of the educational and the corporate world is also changing. Wherein the need-of-the-hour is to have state-of-the-art professionals who are agile enough to meet the growing demands of the industry. [2] In this changing milieu with the versatility in educational courses and the availability of masses of qualified personnel, the competition for job acquisition and job sustainability is becoming tougher. Up until now professional qualification was enough, but in contemporary times, besides having a superb degree one also needs to have an extraordinary personality and the right attitude. Some people are born with the grace and charm required to make that killing success, while some others have to acquire it! And those who refuse to wake-up to the call of the hour are sadly jolted out of their reverie when sudden need arises. [3]
Thus to get an edge over the competitors, students are left with no choice but to add values to their hard skills with soft skills to exhibit their true potential. Keeping these requirements in the mind this paper is designed to address all aspects of information that a potential achiever
requires. The paper focuses on guiding young professionals to perceive opportunities in every challenge. Moreover with an increasing youth population – a major asset to the nation – such guiding tools are essential to provide a roadmap for achieving their destination.
Hard Skills Vs. Soft Skills
The survival of the fittest is the slogan the institutes have to follow to face these challenges. Thus the technical education system should attempt to strive for excellence and pay more attention to the generation of application oriented qualified engineers for socio –economic development of the country and for their own survival. [4]
Success at the workplace for engineers is determined primarily by two skill sets. The first are the hard skills and the second are the soft skills. Before we can take the discussion further, it is important to understand the difference between the two.
Hard Skills/ Technical skills are specific skills, tasks or activities that are needed to be proficient or eligible for a particular job. Hard Skills are easy to identify and define with respect to a particular profession. These are the technical skills that are associated with a respective profession. For example in the case of a mechanical engineer the hard skills would be the personnel’s ability with machines, for a software engineer it would be his or her proficiency level with a programming language. One must have proficiency in these skills in order to become a good professional in one’s chosen fields and to earn decent living. They are bread and butter skills. Hard skills are important and one should never undermine them as they are more rational types.
Soft skills or “people skills” are characteristics that influence an individual’s personal and professional relationships, work performance and career prospects. Soft skills are critical to all facets of the venture. They can provide great energy and cohesion for the members of the enterprise. [5] They can be better described as the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students would desirably develop during their time at the institution , to shape the contribution they are able to make to their profession and as a citizen. [6] However, soft skills are those that everybody has to varying degrees. Many soft skills are an inherent part of an individual’s personality, yet many can be acquired or learned. It is well recognized that soft and hard skills go hand in hand in any individual who has proved to be successful in management and business deliberations. [7]
Soft Skills’ Importance
After having elaborated so much on soft skills, the answer to why they are considered as being so important is still open. There are numerous reasons for having a critical look at a person’s soft skills. One straightforward reason is today’s job-market, which in many fields is becoming ever increasingly competitive. To be successful in this tough environment, candidates for jobs have to bring along a “competitive edge” that distinguishes them from other candidates with similar qualifications and comparable evaluation results. During the last decades in many societies the opinion on soft skills has changed considerably. Whereas in the past the mastering of hard skills was rated first and soft skills were considered as “nice to have”, the perception has been turned upside down as the pendulum of perception on soft skills has moved back to the centre position. Soft skills are playing an important role in shaping a person’s personality, they enable social competence, and they complement the hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a job. [8]
The importance of soft skills as distinct from hard skills or domain knowledge is increasingly being recognized in several sectors of today’s highly competitive market place. Research in many fields such as sales and marketing, software development, engineering and law, has shown
that to be successful in the workplace, knowledge alone is not enough. Soft skills are needed to deal with the external world and to work in a collaborative manner with one’s colleagues. [9] There is no doubt about the fact that the hard skills are an absolute essential for an engineer to perform his job diligently and efficiently. The fact that the second skill set, that is, the soft skills along with the hard skills are an absolute essential for growth of an engineer in the organization. A blend of both is what determines the success of a professional. Soft Skills are what are termed as people skills or interpersonal skills. These determine an engineer’s attitude towards his work, organization, clients and colleagues. Soft skills are not just limited to the workplace of a professional but extends to other spheres of his life too for example social and family. Soft skills is not just about communicating, but includes ability to manage stress, ability to organize, ability to provide solutions. Soft skills make a difference in the external and internal personalities. People who acquire soft skills of high order are more sophisticated, more cultured, more reformed and are found to be more successful in every walk of life. Therefore, in addition to perfecting your hard skills, also try to perfect your soft skills. [10]
Human Capital
The Indian economy, after liberalization, displayed a momentum that far exceeds the expectations, despite a challenging global environment. The most notable aspect of this growth is that, it is broad –based and inclusive to a great extent. India has portrayed itself not only as an economic power house but also as a knowledge hub. For India to continue surfing this kind of growth, the engineering education must continuously evolve itself while being rooted in firm principles and nurtured on right values. We need to keep pace with the ever changing world of engineering education and the aspiration of the business houses. In today’s knowledge economy when human capital is recognized as the most valuable asset that a business has, the people in the organization become the most important differentiator between two companies. No wonder, corporate seeking to add to their talent pool go that extra mile to hire the best, and usually the search ends at engineering institutes.
The leaders of industry have reiterated that, in this changing milieu, they now seek potential candidates, i.e., graduates with sound technical knowledge as well as efficiency in soft skills. [11] These potential candidates are the most valuable asset of the country and the development of human capital and mind shift of the citizens is one big challenge. If we want a move towards a knowledgeable-based economy and be a sustainable first world country, the development of human capital should be a priori. In the context of a global world, a high human capital is a necessity and not a luxury. The approach to develop human capital should be holistic. Holistic in this sense emphasizes the development of knowledge, skills, intellectuality including literacy in Science and Technology and entrepreneurship. It also involves the inculcation of progressive attitudes and high ethical and moral values. This is hoped to result in a first class mindedness holistic human capital. It was observed that infusing Soft Skills into the curriculum of higher education could probably contribute to the development of a holistic human capital who can think of a future in which environment, societal and economic considerations are balanced in the pursuit of development and improved quality of life. Thus this paper is designed to discuss some aspects of sustainable development and to see how the soft skills can realize sustainable development in higher education. [12]
The Changing Nature of Challenge:
The employee engagement has become a herculean task when the times are difficult. Business cycles of boom and depression are neither uncommon nor completely controllable. There is famous saying to the effect that a proactive human is one who, when presented with a lemon,
makes a lemonade of it. This is probably one of the best-expressed ways of echoing the sentiments that a challenge is nothing but an opportunity in disguise. However, having said that, it would be need to consider in a little more depth what this implies for the Engineering graduates who aspire to be the catalyst in the conversation of challenges into opportunities.
The year 1991 can be considered as a watershed year for Indian in many ways. While we achieved political independence from colonizers in 1947, it was only in 1991, after a near disaster in the Indian economy, that the power that be decided to unleash the creative spirit of the native Indian genius. There was little or no competition in the Indian economy then, politician and bureaucracy were taught to look upon business as inherently evil and businessmen as criminals. The entire thrust of engineering education is to equip the students to continually optimize the use of various resources and ensure the survival and success of organization in the face of competitive challenge, while continuing to be relevant to the customer. [13]
Problems of the Indian Sub-Continent:
Though the soft skills crisis is a universal phenomenon, the problems and reasons in the Indian subcontinent are peculiar because of the following reasons:
Our educational system is so designed that it forces students to concentrate more on rote-learning than on developing a spirit of enquiry, which is the most predominant factor to achieve success at work place. A study across engineering service industries in India revealed the top challenges as – Not asking enough questions, assuming customer/authority figure is always right, Being afraid to ask questions and assuming everything is understood based on whatever customer has told us. During their high school education, many engineers would have neglected studying humanities, languages and arts as a result of parental and peer pressure to master science and mathematics, subjects that help clearing competitive entrance exams. In this process, an all- rounded development of complementary human intelligences and faculties like creativity and inter-personal skills is stunted. And all the more the syllabus of most Indian Universities is not frequently updated and so they remain outdated resulting in a wide industry-academic gap. This is the crucial challenge that needs to be targeted. [14]
Redesigning Curriculum:
My initial interest in this issue was ignited by the increasing public debate and heated discussions both in the media and around dinner tables on a variety of issues pertaining to the sector. I was particularly intrigued by the strong and widespread opinion that universities are producing poor quality graduates because they have ‘lowered their standards’ or they ‘offer outdated curricula’ or they ‘do not train students to operate in the real world’. A range of unfounded statements became accepted as uncontested facts in many circles. Several assumptions underpin these arguments. The first is that higher education exists primarily to feed the economy. The second is that theoretical knowledge is not useful in itself, and that a focus on practical and real-life issues yields far better graduates. The third is that programmes in the humanities do not provide students with valuable skills and should therefore not be undertaken if graduates want to be ‘successful’. As a researcher these arguments concerned me because they make strong claims about what curriculum is of most value without sufficient data or evidence to support them. From a socio-political perspective, these
arguments concerned me because they focused only on education in economic terms, which devalues socio-cultural education and has the potential to undermine the democracy and citizenship dimension. It is in this context that I embarked on a journey of exploration about curriculum change in higher education. Turning from public opinion to the literature, I found that higher education has
become intricately tied to society’s progress and development. This in turn has resulted in increased stakeholder involvement in the business of curriculum. Therefore, it is expected that higher education actively participates in solving society’s social, economic and political challenges. This has placed pressure on curriculum to become more responsive, relevant and accountable to society. Thus curriculum change is underpinned by notions of relevance and responsiveness to societies needs. As a result higher education is presently undergoing changes, which have been labelled in the literature as significant, extensive and fundamental.
This feeling that new skills are required for work has motivated some important shifts in thinking about how to best prepare young people for education and work after high school. Educators and school reformers are updating curriculum or redesigning school programs as a way to ensure that young people have opportunities to learn work-related competencies in addition to academics. Despite the interest in supporting students’ development of work-related skills and attitudes, the traditional academic curriculum remains the mainstay of high school education, and many school reforms emphasize improvement in academic subjects.
The desire to raise academic performance and, at the same time, to provide opportunities for students to acquire other competencies creates substantial challenges for educators. Expanding the curriculum to better meet new skill demands raises some challenging questions: What should the high school curriculum look like? How can we teach problem solving and teamwork in English, social studies, and mathematics? To what extent can we incorporate demands for new skills without watering down the academic curriculum? Should we increase participation in service learning or work-based learning to enhance work-related skill development? Answering these questions requires understanding the complex relationships between academic and non- academic skills and work. [15]
Indian Employment Scenario
There is famous saying to the effect that a proactive human is one who, when presented with a lemon, makes a lemonade of it. This is probably one of the best-expressed ways of echoing the sentiments that a challenge is nothing but an opportunity in disguise. However, having said that, it would be needed to consider in a little more depth what this implies for the Engineering graduates who aspire to be the catalyst in the conversation of challenges into opportunities.
With Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) many multinational firms have set up their facilities in India, leading to employment opportunities at every level and change in the recruitment process as the attributes of soft skills are to be imbibed by Indian youth to show their real potential at intra and international levels. Recruiting agencies always report that the number of “employable” engineering, technology, science, business and management graduates in India continues to be low. This, indeed, is a paradoxical situation. There is enormous and spectacular growth in well-paying job opportunities, a huge number of engineering and other graduates are produced every year, but there is a severe dearth of employable graduates. The globalization of the industries and the consequent spurt in the job scene has suddenly found us wanting in the area of soft skills; in fact, the economic boom is now threatened because the effectiveness and growth of India’s talent pool has been seriously constrained due to a deepening soft skills crisis. The recent NASSCOM report endorses this fact by stating that 75 % of the engineers are not employable since the focus is always on academics and theory. The report demands that equal importance be given to skill building and practical training to give the graduates a competitive edge.
Teaching Strategies:
According to a number of scholars academics are not usually trained as teachers; they lack the expertise, experience and confidence to adopt new approaches to teaching so they recommend different teaching styles for developing skills, for example, role play, research exercises and case study. However, it does not discuss curriculum-wide teaching strategies in which the examples can be incorporated. Often skills development occurs on an ad-hoc basis, even though it is argued that programmes must start with a clearly defined and holistic view to develop skills throughout the undergraduate degree programmel. We must consider what this holistic view might incorporate. Firstly, it is important to identify the approaches used to develop skills. The three approaches considered for the purpose of this work are; ‘embedding’, ‘bolting on’ and ‘integrating’ skills components. These are defined as clearly identified teaching strategies relating to skills development in which:
Embedding – no direct reference is made to developing transferable skills and the emphasis is on promoting the development of technical ‘know-how’.
Bolting-on – skills are developed independently of the core discipline, enabling the explicit development of students’ transferable skills.
Integrating – skills are developed and taught explicitly within the core discipline and the same amount of emphasis is placed on the development of transferable skills as technical abilities.
By embedding skills into the curriculum it is possible to forge learning links to develop a broad range of skills. Embedding skills are relatively straightforward compared to the integration or bolting-on of skills as unless there is an explicit awareness related to developing the skills, the associated teaching is less effective. Bolt-on (or stand-alone) skills development approaches suffer from the opposite problem. Even though skills development becomes explicit, students often fail to grasp the academic value of such an approach as learning development and skills enhancement do not thrive if they are divorced from the students overall teaching and learning experience. There is greater support for the integration of skills into the curriculum, as here the skills are integrated into regular coursework and taught by the subject teacher. If the provision of skills development is to incorporate knowledge and understanding, analysis, creativity and evaluation, then integration of skills is the only viable option and more effective approach in higher education as it is more representative of the real-life application of skills in the workplace. It can be argued that all three approaches are necessary for developing skills in engineering degree programmes but it is also important to establish a clear pathway for applying these approaches for the ‘holistic view’ to be successful. [16]
Working on soft skills can be extremely helpful in the long run. Here are some ways of achieving them at personal level:
Read Habitually: It’s never too late to start. Even if you are not much of a reader, make it a point to read at least a few pages each day and increase the number of pages each day. Reading is the key to understanding the language better. It teaches you about word play, usage and timing and will also help you write better. The ability to write crisp, concise and clear letters or e-mails can be an invaluable asset.
Take a Public Speaking Class: If speaking in front of an audience scares you, you can you overcome this fear by performing an exercise that needs you to do just this.
Develop a Good Sense of Humor: Humor can lighten any situation, whether it’s to break the stress to beat a project deadline or make a newcomer feel welcome.
Compliment People: Do this as it is an easy way to reach out to people around you, but be genuine and sincere, flattery is obvious. Superficiality is a thin screen that people can see through and won’t last for long.
Use Illustrations to Communicate: Illustrations can speak the language of the lay person and can simplify tough technical concepts into easy-to-follow concepts. [17]
Conclusion:
The increasing demand from the industry for skilled manpower has accentuated the need to address the gap between the demand and supply of trained labour force. It is now commonly accepted that changes in work and the workplace are transforming the kinds of knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for successful work performance. Evidence for new skill needs from employer surveys suggests that employers are often more concerned about soft skills or attitudes rather than technical knowledge or competencies.
Globalization, in almost all areas of work, has made it imperative to deal with diverse situations involving people from divergent backgrounds. It further emphasizes the role of soft skills. It is not enough to be able to just do your work properly, but it’s also about being able to proactively make a positive difference to those around you in order to take the organization a step forward to achieve its goals. Working on one’s soft skills is definitely a worthwhile exercise not just for employees of an organization but also for one’s personal progress in life. It is generally accepted that engineering graduates need to be prepared for the increasing use of advanced and appropriate technology in their future workplaces. The industries as well as academia, not only from the region, but also from across the globe, have to address the challenges, along with the policy makers and this paper has been written as a moderate step in this direction.
Corporate and Engineering both are entities vast in scope, diversity, and dimensions. I have not make any attempt to get into any specific when I tried to marry the expectations of these two within a couple of pages. My inputs will not necessarily get you a job. But they can significantly reduce the chances of you getting out in the initial elimination rounds.
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