Core companies are the companies which offer jobs to aspirants in a particular domain which is excelled by them during their academic years. It allows them to explore knowledge and test their abilities. For instance, electrical engineers are offered jobs in companies which deal with power generation, transmission and distribution. Similarly, for mechanical engineers and electronics engineers jobs offered are usually in automobiles, machine design sectors and design of circuit chips respectively. These companies are critical to the economic growth of the country. Thus, they ensure greater stability and job security to the employees.

In other words, it can be said that core companies such as Bajaj, Mahindra, etc. are those companies which do not indulge in bulk-hiring like IT or Sales & Marketing companies. Nowadays after completing B.TECH, engineers are mostly hired by mass hiring IT or Sales & Marketing companies like WIPRO and INFOSYS. It’s a common thing how engineers fail to secure their jobs in the core companies and the main reason behind this is the poor quality of technical education provided by technical Institutes in India, except IITs and some other technical Institutes. Most of the engineering colleges in India provide a substandard education to students.

CP Gurnani, CEO & MD of Tech Mahindra, says that 94% of engineering graduates are not fit for hiring. According to the data provided by the HRD Ministry, India has 6,214 engineering and technology institutions which are enrolling 2.9 million students. Around 1.5 million engineers are released into the job market every year. But the pathetic condition of higher education in India results in inadequate skills which lessens the chances of an individual of being employed. As many as 97% of graduating engineers want jobs either in Software Engineering or Core Engineering while only 3% engineers have suitable skills to be employed in Software or Product Market, and just 7% of engineers can handle Core Engineering tasks. Presently, it’s a common thing how most of the engineers join an IT sector job instead of their core sector and there are a lot of reasons behind it, which are as follows:

• Incapable engineers: After getting a B.Tech degree, no engineer is capable of doing work without at least 6 months or one year of training. This is a burden for companies so they are putting freshers aside with a simple word “experience”. But the point is that if no one will hire freshers then how will they get experience? To gain experience, they need to work, but the funny thing is that almost every company rejects freshers by saying them, they don’t enough work experience.
• Outdated syllabus: The technology is changing drastically but the syllabus of the colleges is not changing linearly. In India, we have a very outdated syllabus for studies in almost every field. How can someone studying old mechanisms and technology can work well in these days where technology changes rapidly? Courses are not oriented towards areas which will be helpful in real-world problems. There is a huge difference between what the need of the job market is and what is included in the syllabus of future employees. Mr. Siddharth Bharwani once said, “The traditional education sector in India has not evolved at the same pace as the industry. The expectations that the companies have from their candidates and the skills that engineering graduates bring in, do not match.”
• Less capable teachers: In institutes, it’s seen that many faculty members have not achieved the level of quality which is required for teaching higher studies students. Teachers just want to finish the syllabus and leave the students. They try to follow a traditional way of teaching which is inefficient. They should motivate the students to focus on learning rather than studying.
• Going for higher studies: Some students just assume in their mind that a Bachelor’s degree is not enough to get a good job and because of this instead of putting the effort in Bachelor’s degree they just start their preparation for Master’s degree.
• The state of the economy also plays a major role in employment generation. Industry insiders say that in a strained economic condition, companies do not want to spend much on training and would prefer candidates with some skills sets who can be made billable soon.
• IT sector development: For the past 10 years, I.T sectors developed all over India and many people got jobs but some core sectors like Electronics, Communication, Mechanical, Electrical etc. so students are not enrolled in this type of core department.
• Below standard facilities provided by institutes: Even in this modern era, our studies are highly rated by theories and marks. In India, many colleges don’t have good labs, ponder how one can make a car just by studying theory!? We focus on theory papers much more in our academics and put the practical aside, then how can one imagine that engineers can face real-world problems? Suppose there are 2 students, one has a very strong theoretical knowledge about making of a transformer and the second student has a piece of practical knowledge about the same thing, according to our education system, the former student is very good as he will be able to get a job because he will secure good marks in exams and the latter student will not! But this is a wrong assumption.
• Lack of soft skills and communication skills: “The lack of ability of the individual to deliver his views effectively at the interview leads to the rejection of even the most brilliant candidate. This is because training institutes do not make an effort to ensure that the candidates develop their skills in a wholesome manner which can contribute towards client-handling and team communication skills”, says Siddharth Bharwani. Even the IT sector requires employees who are fluent and well versed in English but the reality is 73.63% engineers lack in English communicative skills and 57.96% have low analytical and quantitative skills.

• ‘The big colleges’ hype: According to some reports, companies only tend to visit top colleges to hire aspirants and thus usually they neglect job applications of students who belong to not well-known colleges.

Despite all these reasons, lack of innovation and research in the academic years and lack of skill-based education system are the biggest elements behind the unemployment of the engineers. In this 21st century, we are teaching our students in a very old manner. We are focused on ‘studying’ not on ‘learning’, further, theoretical knowledge is rated as higher than practical knowledge and the funny thing is, the practical knowledge provided to engineers is also outdated! Higher education bodies of India need to sit and think about it and have to address this issue as soon as possible because it’s an alarming situation for the development and stability of the nation.

Report by Devesh