4 Challenges Companies Face While Hiring Freshers
Fresher hiring has always been a hot market in the Indian subcontinent. We have an abundance of both supply & demand in India, still, companies face challenges while hiring freshers every year. Be it lack of required job skills in students, lack of corporate exposure or lack of soft skills, there are many factors which make freshers hiring hard. Here are 4 major challenges associated with it.
Lack of Technical Skills
Companies do not want an extremely high level of technical knowledge from freshers yet some level of technical knowledge is required. Course curriculum taught in colleges is not enough to teach the required job skills, that’s why many colleges have made it mandatory for students to get an internship in a company. Companies always look for candidates with similar experience — be it an internship or a research project.
Many universities are still not following this and that’s where troubles arise for companies. Many companies have 2–6 months of induction programs for fresher after they join to train them on relevant skills, tools & then deploy them in projects. It is reported that Infosys spends Rs. 14 lacs in the training of each student. If all the colleges start including corporate internship/training as a part of the curriculum, it’d help companies in their fresher hiring process.
Employability assessment report by Aspiring Minds claims that ~96% of engineers in the country were not fit for IT Product jobs.
Lack of Soft Skills
A typical college teaches ~50 subjects to Engineering students in 4 years, most of them focus on core technical skills. A mere 1–2 (or even 0) subjects focus on soft skills. With the globalization of most of the industries, it is necessary for one to have some basic skills like — a) Fluent speaking skills (in English) to engage with stakeholders & peer colleagues b) Presentation skills to showcase their work smartly c) Negotiation skills to deal with high-demanding customers, etc.
Companies demand some of these skills when hiring for freshers. A candidate with excellent soft skills is always preferred over the candidate with minimal soft skills. As colleges do not touch these aspects of soft skills, most freshers lack these skills.
Campus Hiring v/s Off-Campus Hiring
Both Campus v/s Off-Campus hiring has its benefits & challenges. Campus hiring offers ease of recruitment with less stress of administration, candidate filtering while off-campus hiring offers a variety of candidates with different backgrounds to choose from.
Recruiting employees in high number from a single campus may raise the issue of similar culture/mindset as students studying from the same college from the same professors tend to have similar thoughts on many aspects which may have an adverse effect on company’s culture & diversity. Most companies follow a mix of both Campus & Off-Campus for their fresher hiring.
Low Fresher Retention Rate
Most companies have low employee retention rate for people with 0–2 years of work experience compared to other staff. There are multiple reasons for that: a) Freshers go for higher studies like MS, MBA or quit private jobs for Govt jobs b) Freshers have tendencies to take 1–2 jumps early in their career before settling down in life, so they are likely to switch jobs within 1–2 years c) Switching industry: Many freshers who get jobs into their core industry realize they do not like the industry and switch to other industries.
Despite these challenges, companies continue to hire freshers because freshers are quick learners, adaptive with latest technologies & also bring energy to the organization. Many companies have seen freshers with high potential quickly move up the ladder to take middle management roles within 5–10 years. If colleges teach job-necessary technical+soft skills to students before they graduate, it would encourage more companies to hire freshers & it would also help many freshers to get their ‘First Job’.
AccioJob, is a Y Combinator backed IIT-Delhi alumni led startup. We enable companies to hire fresh graduates from a vast network of colleges we’ve built. Would love to discuss more about AccioJob and our journey. Reach out to us at contactus@acciojob.com (or) +91–8595563221.
