If a college degree does not guarantee you a job, what does?

By: Bradley Loiselle, CEO, School of Skill

A few months ago, someone shared a joke that’s still fresh in my mind, “If you get injured at an Indian party, do not worry, you will be surrounded by doctors.” Well, it is no secret that India has a massive talent pool and there is an increasing demand of Indian professionals across various countries. One glimpse at the tech honchos of Silicon Valley and you realize that the large line-up of who's who of the tech world consists of so many Indians. To name a few, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, Adobe's Shantanu Narayen and TiE's Venketesh Shukla are all either Indians or Indian Americans heading the world’s most influential tech companies.

Indians have always pivoted big roles in the largest of multinational companies. In the recent years however, the country is facing some challenges. India has the largest population of youth and maximum number of graduates yet there is a mismatch in the talent required and available. A recent report by Infosys Ltd stated that even though as much as 70% of Indian youth are confident that they have the necessary skills for a successful career, however on the face of it, as much as 70% have a technical knowledge gap. How will the Indian Technology industry boom without skills?

Organisations are trying their best to enhance the skill set of their workforce and are also willing to pay a lot more to those who constantly improve their domain knowledge.  Big data Analysis, Data Science, Business Intelligence, Trading Skills, Database Management, Digital Marketing and many others are some of the niche skills that the companies are looking at while hiring candidates for jobs. Yes, a college degree alone no longer guarantees you a job and skillsets required for these jobs are not a part of a college curriculum. So, how does one get their hands on these in-demand skill based jobs?

To acquire these skills, many Indians prefer studying from foreign universities, though it always has been and will be a costly affair.  What if I say that you do not need to travel 10,000 miles to acquire these skills? We can reverse this trend of Indian students going to study abroad by offering these skills based courses right here. E-learning has done exactly that!

A few weeks of dedicated learning through an online platform can land people the jobs they have always dreamed of. The graduation programmes in the country are no doubt good but since the emphasis remains on theory, the students lack the employability skills, the kind that require practical implementation. The Indian education systems makes Indians eligible and ready for a job, however, to match up to the role and responsibilities bestowed, one needs to showcase specialized skills. But exhibiting technical knowledge without soft skills is also of no advantage. Technology is one industry which is moving so fast that the skills you may have acquired last year might already have become stale and would need brushing up.

IT professionals with the right technical skill sets are excelling like never before. Companies seethe out a huge amount of data from day to day. Analysts, Business operators and Researchers are now coming to faster conclusions by analysing the data which was not obtainable earlier. Statistics, machine learning, data mining, amongst others are the modern techniques which help the businesses gain noteworthy insights. As per a NASSCOM survey, one skill that 62% of the employers would be looking at while hiring talent would be web analytics.

The need of the hour is to improve the standard of technical and professional education in the country. Even the government has realised the need to skill up its population and in the 2016 budget, laid out the objective of enhancing the skills of one crore youth over the next three years. The ministry has set aside a sum of Rs 1,700 crore for setting up 1,500 multi-skill training institutes in the country.

I believe the tendency to observe a connection or a meaningful pattern between unrelated things is very important. This is what I am trying to say when I say it’s the skill of the data scientists that matters and not the data itself. In my opinion, having a paper document alone does not get you a job. I always tell everyone that only you, yourself can get you a job. The papers will help make the learners seem to be more qualified and skilled, but ultimately it is what you can do with your education.