English is the de facto language for corporate India but there’s a huge gap between desired speaking skills and what majority of engineers in India can offer.

According to a survey conducted by Aspiring Minds, an employability credentialing firm, 51% engineering graduates in India aren’t employable based on their spoken English scores.

India produces 600,000 engineering graduates annually, however, 97% of them aren’t eligible for high-end corporate jobs and 3/4th of them are not eligible for job requirements in today’s knowledge economy.

Cold Hard Facts

Only 6.8% engineers show ability to speak/respond fluently, with good pronunciation and proper sentence construction.

Only 2.9% out of those engineering graduates have excellent spoken English skills required for high-end jobs in corporate sales/business consulting.

Salary

The lack of fluency in English is hindering thousands of engineers’ chances at scoring higher salaried jobs. Candidates with English skills above the local average get 30-50% higher salaries than similarly qualified candidates without English skills.

Education

The survey found that spoken English skills of candidates is highly dependent on the tier of college they’ve studied from. The gap between spoken English skills between Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities is much greater than the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.

Metros

Among the major metros in India, candidates who’ve studied from colleges from Delhi, Mumbai+Pune and Bangalore have the best spoken English skills, whereas those from Hyderabad and Chennai are lagging.

The survey analysed spoken English skills of 30,000 engineers in India from more than 500 colleges. The study is based on Aspiring Minds’ automated spoken English assessment tool that measures spoken English (pronunciation, fluency, etc) and listening skills.