Trainable Resource Vs. Skilled Resource

The biggest challenge all companies of all sizes and all industries face is of skilled manpower. It has sort of becoming a cliché in the industry that “will is there in a fresh graduate but skills are lacking”.

Need to first analyze and understand the root cause of the problem which is bi-pronged.

Today be it a simple graduation or a professional course like an MBA or an MCA, the curriculum is at least a decade old. Only thing that is changing is the version of the book referred in the course or at the most another book of new author.

·    So the biggest challenge is to effect a change in the curriculum.

Change in curriculum with increased emphasis on recent developments and changes in the context, live assignments and higher degree of behavioural training shall be helpful. High corporate engagements in the program shall ensure value addition to the regular curriculum of the institute. Engage and interact with the industry on a continuous basis like Guest Lectures and Case Study Discussions, Workshops and Projects, Mentoring and Coaching.

Also, studied but not internalized is a big big issue. Where does this crop from? Simple! I know what a Fixed Deposit is, a commerce graduate shall define it as an instrument to park ones savings in a safe manner. While an MBA finance may define it as an instrument used by the banks or financial institutions to raise a liability and lend it to other customers to earn net interest margin.

Great! What next? How do a Bank benefit from a candidate who knows what FD is? So the company then invests 3-6 months on a fresh hire to bring him to the expected level where he can advise or sell the Bank’s FD. Hence, all this while the recruit is either non productive or underproductive.

Three professional courses I know of where the fresh candidates are productive from day one – Medicine (MBBS, BDS etc.), Hotel Management, Chartered Accountancy.

The only reason I could understand was each of these courses have a very high degree of on field actual experience of the subject studied during the course. This makes them highly skilled in terms of execution of learned concepts.

·  So the next big challenge is trainable resource Vs. skilled resource

There is a need for collaboration and adequate coordination between educational institutions, companies (employer) and vocational training program in order to meet the market requirements. Having continuous interactions with the top companies on what exactly are the skills required by a post graduate to perform in job should be identified and implemented in the curriculum.