Employability Enhancement

Employability Enhancement, Self - Awareness

All educated individuals after completion of formal learning are on the lookout for the employment of their choice or their dream job. Some individuals seek employment in MNCs and would like to build a career in the economic sector that is compatible with their formal education. Yet some individuals would like to take the job for work experience and then they may become self-employed in their own startup firms.

• Whatever may be the objective for getting employed, you shall face questions such as: Are you employable?

• Do you have the necessary skills or competencies that employers are looking for before offering you the job?

• What are the employability skills that the employer is expecting from the prospective employee?

So, those individuals, who are seeking employment will have to first find and identify the employability skills and competencies they need to have before even they apply for the job in the organization of their sector or domain. Individuals may search on their own search engine to find it. It's not a great deal. Very soon they shall find out more or less similar skillsets or competencies as listed here.

1. Self-learning, Self - Awareness and Self- Management

2. Effective Communication and Emotional Intelligence

3. Teamwork, Interpersonal, and Conflict Resolution

4. Problem Solving, Decision Making and Creativity

5. Administration, Management, and Leadership

6. Using Science, Mathematical, and Technology Competencies

Some Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) may offer an opportunity for the learners of formal degrees or diplomas to learn some or more of the above-mentioned skills as part of their informal learning. But if, if some individuals are not lucky enough to have completed their formal academic program from such HEIs, will have to make additional efforts to learn, understand, and practice employability skills.

Seeing the importance and relevance of skills, Govt. of India has emphasized this in its New Education Policy. The New Educational Policy - 2020 (NEP- 2020) and the proposed National Credit Framework (NCF) talks about 21st-century skill set to be embedded with the core domain in the formal degree, diploma, or certificate academic program. These skills are:

• Communication skills

• Independent learning skills

• Thinking skills (critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity)

• Responsibility and ethics skills

• Leadership skills

• Digital skills

• Knowledge Management skills

• Happiness skills

Though this and the above-mentioned list of skills are not exhaustive, it is reasonably essential skills that you need to have before applying for Jobs in your chosen field. Apart from these soft skills, one should be thorough in their own domain-specific knowledge they have acquired in their qualifying degree, diploma, or certificate. This involves, how well you know the terms, concepts, and ideas in the various courses of study, your ability to apply those concepts in real-world situations, your ability to analyze or synthesize a given situation, your critical evaluation ability in your domain aspects, your ability to form your own opinion

or your judgment and your creative skills to solve some vexed problem or situation by finding innovative solutions.

Apart from knowing and practicing these skill sets, to enhance your employability, one needs to know the standard recruitment process of the corporates. This is normally of three stages. In the first stage, if applications are more than the available vacant positions, corporates go in for a screening test to filter the candidates to a reasonable number, the selected number of applicants goes into the second stage of Group discussion where further filtering is done.

Thus, chosen selected few shall in turn enter into the third stage of personal interview. As a part of pre-placement preparation, one should do a lot of practice for standard screening tests or aptitude tests in which you shall have multiple choice questions (MCQs usually multiple-choice single response, i.e. MCSR types) from General knowledge, general awareness about local, national & international aspects. There is a possibility of having a few sections of the test having domain-specific questions. The next stage, group discussion is usually on the current issue or problem. The selection in this stage depends upon your ability to put forth your point or opinion in a group and your ability to arrive at a consensus. The third and last stage involves a personal interview of the human resources (HR) round as well as an in-depth domain-specific round.

The path of employability enhancement begins with learning and practicing the needed skill sets and competencies. The path ends with the prospective employee preparing the CV along with a learning portfolio which consists of a report of the documentary evidence that demonstrates the acquisition of necessary skills and competencies the employer expects.

There are some good private Institutes or Centers that train and certify individuals on the acquisition of needed skills. But they may charge some reasonable fees for the purpose. But, one can, however, take the path of self-development to develop or enhance employability on their own through self-learning and self-practice. To take this path, one should be self-disciplined, self-motivated, and self-confident individual.

The interesting aspect of employability enhancement is not only just to get the first job after completion of formal learning, but also to retain and sustain it and try to climb up the ladder of your career path. This again requires learning on the job. Learning never stops. You keep on learning while performing in your current job. The organization in which you are currently employed is experiencing an external environmental pressure or impact and your organization will have to respond appropriately. Organization learns and in turn, you learn too.

Another aspect of employability enhancement could be to explore the possibility of getting a better position and a better salary job. You have to keep doing the exercise of your own SWOT analysis from time to time. You should be always aware of your strengths, minimize the effects of your weaknesses, or try getting rid of them. You should keep alerting yourself about the opportunities in and around you. You have to be cautioning yourself about the threats that are always around you. This of course you can do by practicing self-learning and self-development.