Filling large outsourcing requirements are not a issue, many of the India pure play firms have adequate resources to fill the gaps quickly. A good percentage of this comes from fresh graduates who come of colleges every year. India produces record number of engineering graduates a good chunk again coming from colleges that lack the basic facilities to teach with poor curriculum and teaching standards. The engineering graduates are not unemployable; they just don’t have industry-ready talent. In other words, they lack the skills required for the jobs that are available to them. Many of them struggle to communicate, cannot answer basic questions and depend on client’s dime to learn and move on with their careers. The quagmire for the clients worsens there and ends with the resources departing after they have gained some traction and actually begin delivering some efficiency.

According to Aspiring Minds, an employee assessment service provider’s 2012 National Employability Report about 83% of engineering graduates are unfit for employment. The report highlights that only about 17.45% of engineering graduates of the year 2011 were employable. National Association of Software and Services Companies’ (NASSCOM) survey of 2011 showcased that over 75% of IT graduates are not ready for jobs and further brought into notice how India’s $60 billion outsourcing industry is spending almost $1 billion a year training them to be fit for jobs.

Deemed unfit in communication skills, confidence, presentation, problem-solving capabilities and generic abilities, an alarming figure presenting hard reality has been brought out in notice. Aspiring Minds also revealed that over 50% graduates fall short of the mark in language and grammar as well.Another interesting finding showcased that graduates from Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4 engineering colleges in India produced graduates that were not industry ready even after interventional training.
Most graduates display excellent theoretical knowledge. However, when it comes to problem-solving, they lack basic analytical skills. The approach to the engineering curriculum in India emphasizes rote (Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition) learning. The same set of questions is asked year after year. If your memorization skills are good, you may cram and score well. But that doesn’t mean that you have the skills the industry is looking for.

To cater to the problem of quality demand and supply, NASSCOM has planned to impart training and development of faculty. Having identified the gaps, industry experts foresee the need for improvement in current colleges as a priority as against bringing together newer courses and institutes for engineering.

The pain for clients meanwhile will continue, the learning curve is stiff. This doesn’t augur well for India’s once booming outsourcing market. Other countries like Brazil, Philippines, Poland, China and other near shore companies in West are moving ahead to cash in.