Employability in India:

Introduction: Employability in India:

1. An operational definition of being employed means having a job, and employable means having the qualities to maintain employment, progress in work place and able to be employed in different work place. From the point of view of the individual, employability skills are the career capital or the learned assets that a person needs to get a job and acquire job specific skills, while on the job. From the point of view of the employers, employability skills are the generic skills, attitudes and behaviours that they require in all their employees. Hence, the employability skills in the point of view of the employer define the requirements to satisfy screening process in the job market.

2. Considering the measures that allow us to check whether a person is employable, there is a general agreement that three types of qualities are important while assessing the employability performance. These are:

a. Key technical and academic skills specific to the job, to great extent academic curriculum prepares the students to gain them. These skills include reading, language/linguistics, and numerical ability, written expression and comprehension and analysis.

b. Process skills: Unlike the key technical and academic skills, process skills need to be demonstrated on the work. These are problem solving ability, creativity, decision making, technological readiness (IT literacy), business understanding, skills that make one employable etc.

c. Life Skills: In addition to the ability to carry out the task, an employer looks for the qualities of self-confidence, communication skills, self-control, self- esteem, social skills, basic values, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to learn, emotional intelligence, stress tolerance, punctuality, efficiency and effectiveness. These qualities are very much embedded with the personality type of the individual.

3. There are either no strategies/actions or limited strategies/actions to address the issue of LIFE SKILLS which has lead to higher rate un-employability. Unfortunately life skill services remain poorly developed and accessible only to very limited numbers of young people in India. Moreover life skill development initiatives have been focused towards the existing work force, those who have left the education system than upon the student population in the education system or the drop-outs.