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Tier II, III institutes start professional training modules

Kousali Institute of Management's director, A H Chachadi, is a lot more optimistic now that his students are better equipped to fight it out in a shrinking job market.

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MUMBAI: Last week, 60 second-year management students of Kousali Institute of Management in Dharwad, Karnataka, were a part of a 30-hour training programme that acquainted them with analytical and communication skills and leadership abilities.

The institute’s director, A H Chachadi, is a lot more optimistic now that his students are better equipped to fight it out in a shrinking job market.

“Our curriculum is really not structured to suit industry needs. With the slowdown leading to companies freezing recruitments, there are very few opportunities for our students. This training programme will help in giving our students some edge,” said Chachadi.

The institute, located 425 km northwest of the IT hub of Bangalore, is finding it extremely difficult to place even two-thirds of its students.

If exactly a year ago the Headache No. 1 of every CEO was shortage of manpower crunch, today it is the exact opposite —- how to reduce staff.

Till slowdown began to hurt, companies preferred to just fill the gaps created by (high) attrition and business expansion —- and not skill gaps. Companies were more than wiling to invest in training and making recruits job-ready.

Not anymore
T Sreedhar, managing director of TMI Group, a Hyderabad-based talent acquisition and management company, said companies are only willing to hire the brightest brains, “they just don’t want to invest in training”.

The Boston Consulting Group said more than half of India’s graduates lack adequate numerical, verbal, and analytical skills.

Bhupesh Gupta, business manager at CareerNet Consulting, a Bangalore-based recruitment firm, said there has been a 20% drop in companies visiting Tier II and III engineering and management institutes, and a 25% drop in job offers.

“The IITs and IIMs are seeing good placements, but the smaller institutes will have to just wait it out,” says Gupta.

Instead of fretting about the situation, several institutes are introducing training modules to improve the employability quotient of students.

“Today, only the best students stand a chance of bagging a job. Also, since curricula are not dovetailed to industry needs, programmes aimed at improving verbal and analytical abilities and soft skills improves job prospects,” concurs Madan Padaki, CEO and co-founder of MeriTrac Services, a Bangalore-based skills assessment company.

Padaki said institutes are increasingly registering for MeritTrac’s training programmes for engineering and management students, called NAC-Tech and TracSkills MBA.

These programmes aim at improving analytical thinking, domain knowledge and communication skills to bring students on a par with those coming out of top-ranking institutes.

Since September, when the investment banking crises exploded big time, up to November, NAC-Tech has seen about 9,500 students registering.

“We expect another 50,000 students to take it in the coming six months. For TracSkills MBA, four management institutes have already signed up and we expect the number to grow considerably in the coming months,” said Padaki.

TMI’s Sreedhar also has received calls from about eight to nine institutes that want to be a part of its training programme called STEP, which aims at enhancing skills of management students.

“We expect more than 20 institutes to be a part of this six day programme,” says Sreedhar.

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