Ravi Panchanadan is the Managing Director and CEO of Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE), one of the largest education service providers in the country. With close to three decades of experience across FMCG, IT and the ITES industries, Panchanadan has a thorough understanding of best business practices and latest technology trends. He feels that reskilling of engineering and non-engineering graduates is extremely important to improve their employability in the market which is constantly changing. An electrical engineer from Jadavpur University in Kolkata and a post graduate management diploma holder from XLRI in Jamshedpur, Panchanadan has worked in different organisations such as Infosys, Intel and Hindustan Unilever. He talks to THE WEEK about the problem of employability of engineering graduates in the country, the importance of reskilling and how new courses are evolving, keeping in tune with the new age requirements.
How grave is the problem of employability of engineering graduates in India as a majority of them still remain jobless?
It is a known fact that India produces the maximum number of engineers in the world but a majority of them are not employable. Engineering employability quotient basically revolves around different aspects such as analytical, behavioral and communication skills. Many of the engineering graduates have good analytical skills but score low on behavioral and communication skills and hence are not successful in getting a job. The problem of employability of engineers in India needs to be addressed in the college itself and an engineering student needs to be tuned to improve his employability quotient while one is in his first and the second year of engineering. By the time this student graduates, he or she has much stronger employability chances when compared to an engineering graduate who has not improved his employability quotient while still in college.
How important is reskilling for engineers in today's changing market condition?
Reskilling in today's changing market situation is extremely important especially in the IT industry and also in different other industries such as banking and automotive. We recently brought out a white paper titled 'Embracing the disruption challenges and opportunities for talent management in the Indian IT industry' which observed that old skills, technologies, tools and techniques are becoming obsolete and new kinds of professionals are being called upon to enter the workforce with a new set of skills.
The paper also pointed out that the fresher talent supply chain desperately needs a major uplift and universities will have to up their game. Similarly, corporates, while engaging in meaningful collaborations with academia and students, also need to develop the culture of continuous self-learning. The paper further pointed out that the Indian education system needs a major overhaul.
Despite being the third largest education system in the world, less than 15 institutes in India are listed in the top 1000 colleges and universities of the world. The study observed that our curriculum is outdated, there is a strong emphasis on rote learning, and meaningful industry-academia partnerships for the learning to be relevant with the present-day job market are rare. New age technologies, automation and protectionism are putting extreme pressure on the Indian IT industry to evolve and remain competitive at the global level.
How has the job roles changed in the banking sector over the years?
You would be surprised to know that around 85 per cent of banking professionals in India including the bank probationary officers are engineering graduates. Over the years, the entire profile of the banking job has changed and it is now more of customer retention and servicing. Basic roles such as opening an account and other bank account related processes are now technology driven and do not need people to service such processes. Rather, there is now a requirement of wealth managers, credit banking experts, and people to serve NRI accounts, among others. At Manipal Global Academy of BFSI, which was established in 2008, we train banking professionals from both public sector banks (PSBs) and private banks for whom we have programmes ranging from a few months to a year.
How important are online reskilling courses for new age professionals?
Online reskilling courses are extremely important for new age professionals as they are usually busy with their jobs and do not get free time to pursue full-time classroom courses. They usually get time when they are free after office hours or during their commute from office to home. This is the time they can utilise to pursue online reskilling courses. However, when they have time on weekends they can also pursue class room study where they can solve certain problems and solutions which may not be possible in an online course. Broadly speaking, it can be a hybrid kind of a course which is a mix of online and classroom study. We offer different courses as per the requirement of a professional.
