Multi-pronged skills are key to enhance Employability Quotient of youth: Jayesh Ranjan

Hyderabad: Around 80 per cent of graduates today are not able to meet the minimum expectations of the industry since they lack relevant technical/industry or sector skills, organisation skills and personal skills. In order to address this issue, Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) organised an event titled "Enhancing Employability through Partnerships". The event, which brought together the heads of academic institutions, key leaders from the industry and government functionaries, focused on finding ways to making youth more employable.

As part of the event, 20 MoU's/Letters of intent were exchanged between TASK and the industry partners. Some of the companies that signed MoUs with TASK and participated in the event are CISCO, Salesforce, Vodafone, Oracle, Infosys, Cyient, NSIC, Mahindra Pride, Mentor Together and TSAT. Each MoU lists courses and skilling programs that the companies will offer to TASK-registered students and faculty. Together, they will enable a comprehensive skilling ecosystem in the state.

Speaking at the event, the Chief Guest, Principal Secretary of the Department of ITE&C Jayesh Ranjan said, "The key to enhancing the quality of graduates and making them more employable is to ensure that the faculty are trained in industry-relevant technologies by the industry professionals themselves". He also said that "the industry should be very proactive in deploying their best personnel to train the faculty in colleges".

MLC Palla Rajeshwar Reddy also stressed upon the importance and need to train and certify faculty so that they can transfer the knowledge to their students.

Telangana State Council for Higher Education Chairman Thummala Papireddy, said, "While the IT industry today is inclining towards emerging technologies, it is still necessary to train students in lower end technologies because that is where a major percentage of entry-level jobs for graduates are".

The Secretary of the Education Department of Telangana, Dr. B. Janardhan Reddy spoke about the new Education Policy. He said, "psychometric tests were conducted on 18,000 students in order to understand their behavioural and psychological aspects and formulate educational policies to address the current generation". He emphasized that the next two to three decades belong to people who have the capability to apply their mind and knowledge to solve problems.

Karthikeyan Ramaswamy, Managing Director of Safran Electrical and Power India Pvt Ltd spoke about setting up an Aero Space skill development centre in Hyderabad and supporting it. Ms. Bhanu Dasgupta, Head Students Programs APAC, Salesforce, talked about the need to improve connectivity between industry and colleges for better implementation of skilling programs.

The event included a Round Table where industry professionals brought out several requirements of the current workplace and provided inputs on the jobs that the next three to five years are likely to bring up. Shrikant Sinha, CEO TASK said "It was encouraging to see the industry coming forward to support the Faculty Skilling in the state and the inputs by the industry are highly relevant to us. It will help TASK formulate its skilling strategy for the next two years".