Hyderabad: In 2014, the share of workforce who possesses the skills demanded by employers or Industry was only 33%. Now the percentage of employable population has increased modestly to 40% this year. This is a decent increase and reflects the current government’s Skill India campaign is having a positive impact on the skill eco system. This was revealed by India Skills Report 2017 – a joint initiative by PeopleStrong, a leading HR solutions and HR Technology company from India, and Wheebox, a Global Talent Assessment Company, in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The most surprising trend shared by the report is the female candidates seem to be more employable than their male counterparts. As per the India Skills Report 2017, 41% of women joining the workforce this year are employable while 40% of men counterparts are employable. “Employability” here does not include only domain excellence but also takes into consideration other aspects like communication skills, logical and analytical ability and several other aspects.
India Skills Report 2017 is backed by various other renowned partners like LinkedIn, United Nations Development Programme, AICTE, AIU and various state governments. This report was launched by Union Minister of Labour Mr Bandaru Dattatreya at CII’s Global Skills Summit in Hyderabad on 9 November 2016.
From the demand side, the study forecasts an overall increase of about 7-10% in the hiring intent for year 2017 when compared to the current year. Despite the kind of turbulence which is shaking the global market, it is a very good sign to see a moderate increase in hiring in the coming year. Though at an overall level, almost all sectors except Telecom (which expects high growth in hiring) expect a steady or moderate growth. For example, allied sectors in telecom, auto ancillary, quick service restaurants, and power and energy management are expected to lead the growth in hiring. This brings good news to the candidates who are on a look out for job opportunities.
Mr. Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder and CEO of PeopleStrong, said” It feels great to see yet another version of India Skills Report. It is especially interesting to see a positive hiring intent for the third consecutive year, and also the focus that is expected to increase towards women hiring and entry-mid level jobs. With jobs at the center of every skilling and employability related initiative I am sure that results will improve and with each year we will see the impact of matchmaking initiatives which have started “.
India Skills Report 2017, in its fourth season, captures insights from the largest employability test that was spread out to 3000 educational campuses, assessing five lakh students across 29 states and seven union territories from noteworthy educational universities and professional institutes in the country along with the India’s hiring intent survey that reached out to more than 125 employers across 11 major sectors.
In addition to this the report this year had special focus on the current state of gender diversity in organizations across sectors and the initiatives employers are taking to improve this number. According to the study, though the gender diversity in almost all sectors has still not touched the number of 33%; not many organizations are looking to resolve this issue right at the source. Only 40% of the employers who participated in India Hiring Intent survey, have defined targets to hire women candidates. And even in organizations where this number is right there on the KPI charts the target ranges from 10-40% (depending on the industry and the kind of work).
Mr. Nirmal Singh, Founder and CEO of Wheebox said” If we look at the current stock of the Skill landscape in India, the situation is alarming. As per India Skills Report 2017, we found out that of all the students entering the job market across the country, hardly 2 out of 5 meet the criteria of the employment set by the employers. The severity of the situation is accentuated by many levels when the economy is looking up, new jobs are getting generated in ecommerce, energy, retail, telecom, hospitality and financial industry; but there are not enough “skilled” people available. Many jobs are getting mechanized and can be managed by a few people and intelligent algorithms then we are heading to a large challenge where many of us do not know the unknown future. We may have plenty of low to moderately skilled people for jobs that may not exist in future”.
“The need of the hour is to evangelize the large challenge that is just round the corner. All countries experience demographic dividend once in their lifetime and India’s demographic dividend is just an opportunity for next 25 years, Once gone it will neve rcome again. Though we are late in identifying the opportunity still if we do not prepare ourselves rapidly to reap the benefits” said Nirmal Singh.
…
