Improving Employability Skills among IT and Engineering Students

Abstract

This paper is on improving employability skills among youth, particularly among engineering students. It focuses on the skills required by industry, particularly the IT industry, and ways and means to develop those skills among the students to make them more employable. It tries to bridge the gap between industry and academic institutions. This paper will benefit students from any stream who wish to make a career in IT. With the IT boom, many students from all engineering streams chose a career in IT. Hence, students from all technical streams should find this paper relevant.

Most employability trainings for college students focus on cosmetic improvements in presentation style, personality development, language skills, etc. to impress the interviewer. As a Senior IT professional who has over 30 years of industry experience, mostly as a CIO, the author feels that these cosmetic attributes are less significant for candidates from technical streams like engineering, particularly for IT function.

The quality which appeals the most to the interviewer is not his/her personality, not even the technical knowledge. Appears strange when I exclude technical knowledge too? The paper will soon reveal why. Having worked with and trained several youngsters on the job, I can vouch that the industry needs some other skills in this environment of rapid technological changes. The paper discusses what exactly those skills are.

This paper presents a much better, interesting, and effective way to make IT and other engineering students more employable. The method described here not only makes them more employable for their first employment after college, but it also helps them to remain employable, skilled, and relevant throughout their career.

This paper tries to identify those skills and discuss why they are important. More significantly, the paper not only presents a strategy to develop those skills in students by catching them young, but also shows how the strategy was practically implemented to ensure that the students benefited from the strategy.

The training is now available to students and colleges with upgraded content, mostly free of cost.

Keywords: Employability Skill, Skill Development, Information Technology, IT, Engineering Students, College students, Job search, IT Skills, Engineering Skills, Career Development, Career Choice, Hobbies, Occupational Choice

JEL Classification: J24, J62, M53