How small-town grads are getting to improve employability quotient

Chandan Singh was desperate. It had been a while since he left his village in Bihar after completing basic education and landed in Delhi to upgrade his skills so as to bag a decent job.

But despite shelling out Rs45,000 for a course in networking, he had not been able to secure a job that could help cover both his study expenses and daily expenditure.

All he got was a technical support job in a shop selling computer products, for a paltry Rs2,500 per month. Nobody was ready to hire him for a higher package, primarily because of his inability to speak English.

“The pay was not even sufficient to make ends meet in a city like Delhi, forget covering study expenses. All big employers look for English speaking skills,” reminisces Singh.

Having studied in a Hindi medium school in a village in Seetamadhi district, where not one soul spoke English, he could hardly do better.

“People in my place speak Bhojpuri. If I were to break away from the chain of working in sugarcane farms like people back home, I had to build my English quotient and get other skills required in corporate houses.”

As luck would have it, through some acquaintances, Singh found out about a three-month course addressing his requirements. “From Monday to Saturday, for eight hours everyday, trainers helped me enhance my grammar, diction, vocabulary and confidence.”

That course helped him get job offers from firms like Omnia BPO, WNS, IndiGo Airlines, for salaries upwards of Rs9,000 per month. For the last few months, he has been with BPO firm Intelenet Global Services, earning Rs17,000 a month, which he says is a big jump over the meagre amount earned in the shop.

Like Singh, a course in English and corporate etiquette helped MBA student Raghu Rampal get two campus offers from a leading private sector bank and a FMCG company for Rs2.4 lakh a year each.

Just some months ago, Rampal had no knowledge absolutely of how to approach an interview, what to expect from the job, or the importance of corporate decorum.

He feels he could get two job offers only because of the training in English communication and soft skills etc offered in his institute.

“In Jalandhar, English is hardly spoken. So even though I studied in English, conversing in that language is a bit tough. Moreover, corporate etiquette and mannerisms are something we small-towners lack. So this training in college really helped,” says Rampal, who is studying at the City Institute of Management Studies in Jalandhar.

Singh and Rampal are among several youngsters pursuing courses in management, engineering, pharmacy, commerce and hospitality, etc, in places such as Trichy, Shillong, Malda and Moga, who are getting trained to improve their employability quotient.

Every job needs communication with other people and employers are interested in workers who can express themselves clearly, says Deepak Kaistha, CEO, Planman Consulting, an HR firm.

“The lack of basic skills is a serious issue and can be traced to the poor quality of education in rural India.”

Indeed, even in good institutes in small towns, students find it tough to speak English and are clueless about corporate culture, say experts.

“They have no idea how to answer in a job interview, as there is very limited exposure,” says Nivedita Murkhute, who is currently training students at the Manav Rachna International University in Faridabad.

Such training is essential in imbibing a sense of responsibility towards one’s profession and motivation amongst students, says M K B Bhatia, placement head and coordinator, Lala Lajpat Rai Institute of Engineering and Technology in Moga, which is 60 km from the Pakistan border in Punjab.

“It’s a part of our timetable and we hold internal assessments and give marks so that students take it seriously,” says Bhatia.

According to him, the training was started a year ago for about 600-700 students, and the feedback from students so far has been encouraging.

The training centres around soft skills, apart from English communication, industry skills, personality development, all of which help increase the employability quotient, says Amit Bhatia, CEO of Aspire Human Capital Management, a firm providing such training since July 2007.

Aspire, from where Singh and Rampal got their training, aims to train 1 million students from around 100 small towns in Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir annually, beginning 2015-16.

“In 2009-10, we had trained 12,000 students and we aim to close this financial year by training 30,000 students. Every year, we will treble the number of students,” says Bhatia.

Aspire doesn’t have training centres of its own. Rather, it sends its trainers to colleges that are interested in partaking of this activity and impart training to the students.

“Till now, of the total students we have trained, about 60% are from engineering, 30% from management and the rest from pharmacy, hospitality and commerce. Post-training, we often bring employers to the institutes,” says Bhatia.

According to him, the training costs the company about `8,000 per student, which is paid by the colleges, which in turn collect the money from the students as part of their fees.