NEW DELHI: Less than one-fifth of the total numbers of engineering graduates are fit to be employable in the IT services sector, said the National Employability Report 2011, released by Aspiring Minds.



"India has a sizable engineering talent pool. However, only 17.45% are fit to enter the IT services industry," Himanshu Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Aspiring Minds said. The country produces about five lakh engineers every year.



The report also revealed the percentage of ready-to-deploy engineers for IT product jobs is dismally low at 2.68%. This is because jobs in IT product companies require a strong understanding of computer programming and algorithms, besides soft skills and cognitive skills.



But the study found that the candidates strongly lacked the required skills. "The skills required by the IT product companies at the entry level are very much a part of the curriculum of engineering colleges, which is a worrying sign for higher education," according to the report.



The Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry is likely to find 9 out of every 100 engineers employable, while in hardware and networking profiles, the employability stood at 36.75%.



The largest percentage of employability was seen in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, where about 40% candidates were found eligible. "However, graduate engineers do not form the preferred employable group for these companies due to the belief that these roles cannot match their expectations, both in terms of remuneration and job satisfaction," the report pointed.



The report, which covered more than 55,000 engineering students who graduated in 2011, also highlighted that focus on increasing the quantity of engineers has impacted quality drastically. "With regard to employability percentage in different states, it was found that employability decreases logarithmically with the number of colleges in the state. This clearly shows that opening more colleges is directly impacting the percentage of employable engineers graduating every year."



According to the report, IT companies seem to missing out on the long tail of engineers, who come from campuses other than the top 100, as better employability levels could be see there. More than 70% of employable candidates for any sector are in campuses other than the top 100.



It was found that 50% of employable candidates for IT services companies and 28% of employable candidates for IT product companies are not even in the top 750 colleges, and thus form an invisible pool to most employers, the report said. "There is an invisible talent pool, which lies unutilised due to the absence of a mechanised hiring and inclusion system. There is an urgent need to address this disparity," Aggarwal said.

