India’s Unemployability Problem

Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash

The fourth industrial revolution popularly abbreviated as 4IR has been a topic of hot discussion, analysis and scrutiny. From small businesses to huge tech giants, all stakeholders are somehow trying to gain momentum in the age of data, automation and AI. Every major industry ranging from retail to healthcare is now becoming increasingly data-driven across all of their verticals including marketing and operations. And clearly, this has led to a paradigm shift in the skill-set required to be employable.

Wadia Ait Hamza, head of the Global Shapers at the World Economic Forum went on to say “If [business is] not listening to the youth, they are not listening to their future competitors, employees, or customers.” India has the largest youth population in the world but the unemployability of engineering and management graduates in the country poses a serious threat and hindrance to the goal that we are working towards — that of realizing India’s demographic dividend — the collective output and growth that can be achieved provided we upskill the youth enough. On one hand, we have the problem of unemployability and on the other hand, we have deadly prophecies coming one after the other that ‘x million’ jobs would be lost by 2030. What do we do? How do we prevent the supposedly inevitable?

UNEMPLOYABILITY is not a new devil. It is the elephant in the room that is now making enough noise to be noticed and scrutinized. So, what exactly are some of the reasons that have led to unemployability on such a massive scale. This is what we know:

1. Lack of strong fundamentals : To have a strong understanding of AI and Machine Learning, one first needs to have a thorough grasp on Probability, Statistics, Calculus and Linear Algebra. Most of these topics are taught in high school and unfortunately due to lack of a strong, industry-focused education system in K-12, students are not equipped to deal with the more micro-topics as their macros are not clear in the first place.
2. Information Overload : We are living in an era of information overload. There is too much data and information for the human mind to process and make sense of. Too many courses, too many certifications, too many frameworks and technologies. Students are confused about the starting point and are scrambling to find that one course which will make their fundamentals clear.
3. Lack of Personalization : Different students have different cognitive levels and yet each one is special. Unfortunately, the current influx of fancy pre-recorded videos that has catapulted the ed-tech boom is not capable enough of addressing student’s core doubts. They are good for revision but bad for building strong fundamentals needed to master the tougher, micro-topics.
4. Lack of Quality Native Content : A free YouTube Stanford Lecture on Natural Language Processing cannot help a student in India who lacks basic English Language skills. No matter how outstanding the faculty and the method of delivery is, students cannot understand the content which is even slowly-paced in a relatively unfamiliar language. And, coupled with this is a serious dearth of quality content in native language.
5. Too much of Peer Pressure/Stress : Students here run after what other students are running after who are running after what their friends are running after and so on. And with this, comes copious amounts of parental pressure that further exacerbates the situation. All of this leads to stress and anxiety which decreases self-confidence and concentration and further increases unemployability.
6. Lack of a proper soft-skills curriculum : Parents, Colleges and students in India are blissfully ignorant when it comes to soft-skills. Running after core technical skills is not a bad idea but it does not make someone employable. Employers are today looking at emotionally smart people. People who can understand human emotions well enough to make effective sales, marketing and strategic plans. They are looking at employees who are flexible enough to handle cross-functional responsibilities and who can handle stress better than others. And why is this? Globalization is not the only reason. The bigger picture is that in the age of automation, manual human jobs are becoming redundant and what requires persistent human intervention are operations that require empathy and awareness.

Here is a small video summing all this up:

Konsciously is an ed-tech platform trying to make its contribution to solving the unemployability problem. To know more, please visit us at https://konsciously.com.