100 million engineering jobs by 2022, but 8% employable in India

A sample of 1,50,000 engineers showed huge gaps in in skills of engineers, as needed, to work in the large industry. Image Source: Reuters

Significant efforts need to be made to improve employability in the engineering sector as less than 8% of Indian engineers are employable in core engineering roles, reveals an Aspiring Minds' report.

The National Employability Report for the first time this year looked into the employability of specialised and new careers, which are available to engineers, other than core IT and software roles.

The nationwide analysis based on a sample of 1,50,000 engineers showed there was a huge gap in skills of engineers, as needed, to work in the large industry.

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However, the government's 'Make in India' initiative aspires to create manufacturing capacity in India and generate 100 million jobs by 2022.

"There are several problems with regard to employability in core engineering roles. We need to excite students about these jobs. Everyone's focus today is on IT. We want students to design and build things.

We need emphasis on the basics, for instance, basic electrical engineering, basic concepts of mechanics and so on," Varun Aggarwal CTO Aspiring Minds said.

Low employability of engineers, however, will impede the growth of manufacturing in India in a big way and requires immediate intervention, the employability assessment firm said.

Aggarwal noted that students do not have these basic concepts right. There is a huge need of a curriculum revamp and to bring in new teaching methods and technology.

"The science of manufacturing has moved way ahead but we continue to teach outdated concepts to students. For India to become the world's manufacturing hub, we need to lead from the front in our understanding of cutting edge methods, knowledge- driven management and implementation capability," he added.

Employability for roles like mechanical design engineer and civil engineer stand at a meagre 5.55 % and 6.48 % respectively.

The lowest employability percentage was recorded for the Chemical Design Engineer role at 1.64 %.

Employability in the domain specific roles is the highest for Electronics engineers at 7.07 %.

This percentage is considerably lower compared to employability in IT roles like Software Engineer - IT services and Associate ITeS Operations (Hardware Networking) which stood at 17.91 % and 37.06 % respectively.

The study on employability across metros reveals higher employability in Delhi and Mumbai with employability for the electronics design engineer role as high as 19 % followed by cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

The lowest employability figures across roles is observed in Chennai with employability for the Civil Design Engineer role as low as 1 %, the report said.

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