CHENNAI: India may be churning out lots of business management graduates but how many of them are effective employee material? According to a nationwide study of marks secured by 2264 MBAs who sat for tests by recruiting companies, only 21% were found to be actually employable. Conducted by MeriTrac, the latest figures show a sharp decline – the last such survey done in 2007 placed employability at 25%.

Drawn from over 100 B-Schools beyond the Top 25 in the country, the students who were covered by the survey were tested for verbal ability, quantitative ability and reasoning. This despite the fact that more and more B-schools are mushrooming across the country churning out hundreds upon thousands of freshly-minted MBAs every year. An examination of the ‘AICTE Approval Process Hand Book: 2012-13’ reveals that the number of MBA seats in India has jumped nearly four times – from 94704 in 2006-07 to 352571 in 2011-12. That works out to a 5-year compounded annual growth rate of 30%.

The cut-off scores used in the study were 45% for verbal ability, 35% for quantitative ability and 40% for reasoning. The overall average percentage score obtained by MBAs in verbal ability was 52.58%. The average score was much worse for quantitative ability (41.17%) and reasoning (37.51%). “The results of 2012 employability report covering 2264 B-schools students from 29 cities are quite startling. This report clearly brings out the employability gaps across various competencies and highlights the need for scientific examinations and tests to align the candidate skills to employability metrics.” says S Murlidhar, CEO and Director, MeritTrac Services. The survey will now be done once every two years.

Given the not-too-impressive average scores for reasoning, this is an area where there is scope for improvement. Given that organisations hire from this talent pool for strategic roles and this is the managerial pool that companies bank on for future growth, this is clearly the area that needs focus.