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Since I haven't done any post secondary education from India, I cannot speak for Indian graduates. But one thing here companies look for when hiring new graduates is not what he or she knows, but instead what he or she is willing to learn. You see right out of College or University, no one is expected to act like an experienced professional, for which you need years of experience. Instead you need to have the willingness to learn in order to be a good professional years later. And that's what companies want. They want graduates to be smart enough and eager to learn what they teach them so that hopefully someday, they'll be at least half as good as their best talent right now.

Also in order to learn the new and innovative things in your field, sometimes you need to have a thorough understanding of the old stuff first. Of course I am speaking here as a Mechanical engineer, don't know how it is for any other profession.

All the reasons that are being discussed in this thread aren't new. These are known facts for quite some time. So, what have we done about it or what are we doing about it? Frankly, nothing.

It is sad to see if there are certain schools that offer a different perspective to education, it is branded as out of sorts for normal middle class families and kids are not sent to these schools.

I got my kid into a school where the philosophy was that if the child is not doing well, then it is the schools problem and not with the student or parent. There shall be no home works, tests, marks, etc. But what happened, in no time there was pressure from parents and then we now have home works, tests, marks, and the associated peer pressure.

So, who do we blame here. School for giving into the pressure of the parents, who put this sort of pressure on the school because they were under peer pressure.

Net, net, this is one hell of a hopeless situation and I see no way out of this unless parents take it up as a cause and ensure that their kids are free to choose a profession on their choice and not to give into the damn peer pressure of %age and marks and the associated tom-toms of how well their kids are doing at academics.

What we really need is primary+highschool education of India and 4 year under-grad education of US. That is the best combo.

What is Employability ?,

Employability is a Combination of

1. Potential of the candidate to be relevent and continue to contribute to the organization. Education, Training, Skillsets, Strengths, Abilities, Network, Influence, (previous) Experience etc outline one's potential to contribute to the organization.

2. Performance of the Candidate to deliver the needed results within the given environment, resources. This is the outcome of how the candidate uses his potential to quickly learn, adapt, work, deliver the expectations.

Better Potential, better are the chances of the performance getting delivered. Hence for a fresher how deep is his conceptual understanding of the subjects is very important as he does not have previous work experience

3. Attitude of the candidate, to raise to the occation, to work in a team to deliver superlative performance which otherwise would not be possibile.

This is the aspect which makes both potential as well as performance look real, visible, 3-D which can be felt by the people around you.

Sincerarity, Honesty, Never give up, Co-work, Share, Build, have fun etc are some of the attributes which outline a person's attitude.

Trust me, Knowing the latest technology is just <10% of the job needs and can be learnt in few weeks.

What is important is the foundation, on which the building needs to be built. if foundation is not strong, then the building won't survive. Today, we have eduction system which requires a kid to go through

3 years of pre-school (nursery, Jr KG, Sr. KG)
10 years of Primary, Seconday school
2 years of higher secondory / pre-university schooling
3 or 4 or 5 years of Graduate Studies
2 years of Masters

i am sure that the basics taught in the engineering studies are good enough to understand advance technologies, but how seriously a boy or the girl has studied, understood or internalized is the question.

it is for every student (parent and teachers as well) to ponder over this.

there is so much I would like to say, but its pointless.

I had actually typed out a much larger reply, but it was becoming more of a rant, and of a personal nature, so never mind:Frustrati

Ouch!

That one touched a raw nerve. :Frustrati

I don't mean to offend anyone here. This is what I have seen happening...to me and others.

A consultancy firm walks into college. They keep their cut-off at 60%. I am happy that my 65 would be enough for once.

They ask us to fill up a huge number of forms. It is said that they'll filter some applicants out to reduce the number giving the test. So we all diligently fill up our forms, confident that it'll be good enough to clear the first hurdle.

The result is declared. Sadly, my name does not feature anywhere.

Why?

Because they used percentage to shortlist people. Anyone below a 65.1 was thrown out, without as much as a glance at those stupid forms.

And so... I could not even sit for it.

When was I allowed to show my competence?

If consultancies believe they need people who remember V-I characteristics for every friggin transistor ever built... then where am I to show my competence for the job?

Will JFETs and Klystrons decide whether I can be a good business consultant?

This is not a one off incident, every company does this.

They make you fill forms, but never go through them. It is just so much easier to sort an excel sheet by marks. Why bother evaluating the applicants?

When will the companies answer for this?

Believe me, this isn't a personal grudge...I anyways got placed with Deloitte & Touche. It is just about how stunted the approach towards recruitment is for the employers.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

The problem I find is with the employability of people who have already spent a few years working in a IT company.
I dont care if a fresher doesn't know much about the work we do. We can't expect them to know everything. I find that there are a lot of fresh graduates who are good and we dont have a problem atleast in our company.

I have been a mentor to lot of freshers abroad and for people with bachelor degrees, they are not that good either.

Well, what about companies who (in their job advertisments) ask for BE + MBA for their sales and production team? These companies are forcing candidates to 'ditch' their 4 years efforts arent they?

I believe education provides a basic understanding (foundation) of theories, principals and practices for future learning. Learning is a continuous process and we dont complete learning in 4 years of professional course. In that respect our syllabi (all disciplines) is still good enough.

Parents send children to school with a motive that they study well, get a well paid job and settle in their life. In such process, a few ever get to do what they actually wanted to do. Some will succumb to their own mistakes and others to certain circumstances and obligations.

Cheap politics and business interests in education has definetly deteriorated our education system vastly.

No offense taken. We all have been through this at some point of time.

On average any company offering decent package ( 7 - 10 lakh for B Tech) would have 4 - 500 applicants that satisfy "minimum" requirements. Its just not possible to "objectively" analyze each resume.

Fortunately, I found a solution in my field (Software). That is sites like topcoder.com, codechef.com.

We use tools like these for filtering.

Here, students have to write code that compiles and satisfies all test cases and works with a given amount of memory and time limit. Only those who can complete given problems are interviewed.

Hehe! I have a codechef sticker on my laptop. ;)

I agree with the fact that the number of people applying is huge, but then do you not agree that this way the companies end up with 60-70% of the people being super geeks who haven't the slightest idea what a KPI is?

And if they do not want to analyze the application, I feel it is just wrong to give the students false hope and make them fill a thousand forms that will never be read.
:P

And yes, there are companies that test 400 people without using percentage as a screening factor. I agree, few they are...but it proves that it is possible.

And I have TopCoder T-Shirt I won in Google Code Jam 2005.:) Ok, I don't exactly remember why I got it since I stood a distant 163rd in that contest. I didn't need the job, I just participated to see where I stand among the kids.

During that time we did try to use Topcoder.com to test the candidates in C++. After experiencing 100% failure rate for a month, we stopped using it. That is when it dawned on us that none of the freshers really know C++ beyond the syntax. No, ours is a very small company, all the high-fliers who can solve top-coder problems, never even apply to us. So we hire for trainable candidates and teach them all the basics they were supposed to learn in engineering college.

To each his own. Those good with networking / social skills would already have jobs from internships ;) .

Possible for sure, but not always feasible with limited resources available for resume screening.

I wish there was some way to make it easier for students.

@Samurai

Quite obvious. People who ace Topcoder and Codechef join companies like Google, Directi, Citrix etc.
163 isn't that bad! I didn't see the 2005 one...

Is it possible that stress could be laid on algorithms rather than coding? I know it is difficult to rate an algo without running the code... but isn't that a better indication of a good programmer?

@Netfreak
Seriously, I agree. Things are really bad. And not just for the students... but also for the companies. They end up taking the wrong people... students end up sitting in the wrong companies. In the end everyone is unhappy.
Where do you work? ;)

Well, HCL CEO thought otherwise about employability of Indian Vs US Grads:

American tech grads are unemployable: HCL CEO - SiliconIndia

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/...RSKHWATMY32JVN

He wants our grads to learn dumb process methodologies before they learn to code !!

Brought back a memory.

Back in the mid-nineties, when the job market was not as lucrative, HCL-HP marketing was a coveted job. From our batch they selected just 2 candidates across all streams.

What took us by surprise was that they had both an upper and a lower cut-off. IIRC, no one above 75 or was it 80% was allowed to sit for the aptitude test. Apparently they wanted to filter out the 'super geeks' since the chances were that they would not suit the rigours of a hard-core marketing job.

I personally knew one of them pretty well - and he truly shone in HCL for the next few years. Sales/marketing was in his blood so to say.