BRIDGING THE GAP – EDUCATORS & EMPLOYERS
ROSY MERLIN IRUDAYARAJ
Campus Recruitment, The School of Business Logistics merlin@tsbl.in , 9962891491

ABSTRACT
This paper elaborates on the necessity of educators and employers partnering to bridge the gap, the gap that is defined to be the workforce supply and demand mismatch.
The accelerated economic growth has increased the demand for skilled manpower that has highlighted the shortage of skilled manpower in the country.
Today’s competitive world demands trained, certified and skilled workforce to address the challenges emerging out of rapid growth.
Our present education system is more focused on the transfer of information and knowledge from the educator to the learner with less opportunity for applied learning and is less focused on other employable skills required for building a holistic career as adopted by other countries.
The prevailing unemployability challenges has resulted in situations where employers are likely to point educators for producing candidates who aren't meeting their expectations.
It is the responsibility for educators to produce employable candidates by preparing students for a successful transitions in their careers. Hence, the need of the hour is to synergize the efforts and resources to provide feasible platform for skill development, educators partnering with employers can effectively build workforce with skills that align with the requirements of domestic and global industry sectors. This is the ideal way forward that will strengthen the process of quality and inclusive education.

India’s Demographic Bonus
Being one of the emerging and powerful countries in the world, India holds an incentive of demographic bonus.
India is expected to have the largest workforce in the world by 2025; as stated in the “India supplier the workforce of the world - “Financial Times”. Evidently apart from meeting its own demand, India has the potential to become worldwide hubs for sourcing skilled labor. Currently, India’s share in the global outsourcing market is 38%. (Financial Times)
Consequently, until 2040, India will be experiencing a period of demographic bonus, where the growth rate of the working age population would exceed that of the total population started in ‘population projection and its socio-economic implication,” India- IIPS. (International Institute of Population Science).
While China’s demographic dividend would start tapering off by 2015, India is expected to enjoy the benefits until 2040 – employment and skill development, 12th four year plan.
And the increasing proportion of working population will provide a window of opportunity to improve labor productivity increasing domestic productions. Empowered with unique demographic advantages and guided efforts, India can be poised to position itself among developed economies within the next 10-15 years.
Demographic Dividend – A Challenge
Though we enjoy the demographic bonus and claim to produce the largest workforce, the challenge is to prove whether all or the maximum number of produced workforce is employed or employable. The challenge raises the question of employability. The employability challenge is complicated and compounded because of three mismatches and they are: 1. Geographic Mismatch - For the coming year’s most of the job opportunities are estimated to be only in selective states of this country, thus requiring the labor force to remain mobile and hail to states that possess prospective job openings. 2. Sector Mismatch – Young people, lose their patience waiting for the right opportunities in a certain industry. And nearly 50% of the current workforce agrees that they had switched and are currently employed in different sectors that doesn’t fetch them career growth in the expected growth rate. 3. Skill Mismatch – Three fourth of the employers claim that fresher’s don’t meet their expectations. And justify quoting “Lack of employable skills“.
The inference is that candidate has not been exposed to the job environment to understand and acquire the required on-job skills expected from him/her and thus fail to stand-up to the employer’s expectations is the underlying truth.
Need for the Bridge
To begin with, the need for the bridge is earmarked diplomatically in the below quotes,
“Think of the education to employment system as a highway, where three drivers – educators, employers and young people – all want to get to the same destination. There are three critical intersections- when the young people enroll in post-secondary education, when they build skills and when they seek work.
At every point each driver needs to take account of the others and keep moving safely and efficiently. However this doesn’t happen usually. Instead , drivers don’t take one another into account , proceeding obviously in their own lanes or they collide leaving everyone worse off than when they started. “ - Dominic Barton , Mckinsey.
For instance, we cannot teach and shape an individual to be industry ready in months which should be learnt in 15 years overtime. The current scenario between the educators and employers need to be reformed, pursued and expanded simultaneously.
Bridge Design
With the advent of globalization and opening up of Indian economy to outside world, competitions among industries have become stiff.
Thus there is an urgent need to prepare the students by exposing them to the global environment, emerging technologies and changing trends in the industry. This objective can be achieved by bridging the gap between educational institutions and the employers.
Foremost the design of the bridge should be collaboratively designed and implemented by educators and employers and must avoid designing their own bridge while addressing the same problem.
For the educators and employers have fundamentally different understandings of the same situation in addressing the employability challenge, it is necessary that Foremost the design for the bridge should be accepted as an investment than as an expense by the employers or educators.
Bricks for the Bridge
The sustainable way to reduce the gap and overcome the issue of demand and supply mismatch is by addressing the components of 1) Education 2) Employability 3) Employment.
The two major issues are the following : 1. STICK-TO-ITIVENESS: Today’s fresher’s lack the capacity to endure with challenges and they are limited by their rigid expectation and narrow mindset towards life and environment. 2. MINDSET BARRIER: The organization’s approach towards employment is to hire trained workforce and are not willing to hire them as trainee and then train them in a particular job profile and on their performance recruit. On the other hand, the situation is, the younger generation is rigid enough in their mindset to be suitably trained.

The above two factors contributes to the mismatch in supply and demand of workforce.
Employers are often seen willing to invest only in those specific job profiles whose value they can fully capture, they do not want to train candidates on their core expertise areas fearing they might take their expertise elsewhere.
The passage from education to employment is a road-less traveled, with many unique needs and requirements with demanding challenges along the way. It is inevitable to get lost along the travel, if one’s destination is changing. Today’s young generation are often seen lost in their career pathway owing to either no vision for themselves or changing vision.
Thus, the employability challenge is to be addressed by individual bricks : Competency based assessments, personalized counseling, out of box curriculum, growth enablers as trainers, training methodology, intern, apprenticeships and job opportunities. The bricks drives the holistic development of the individual.

Bridge Pillars
Employers should integrate their social responsibility activities in building up the next generation of workforce collaborating with the educational institutions and support the educational cause to reach individuals, guide them for positive growth.
Some of the Collaborative initiatives of employers with educators can be: * Organise Workshops, Conferences and symposium with joint participation of the faculty, parent community, experts and industry people. * Integrating Industry Lecture series as part of the academic stream to provide real-time and real-world learning. * The curriculum framework can be engineered/re-engineered by the industry experts and executed by the educational experts thus transforming the academic environment to support personal and professional growth. * Fund and support research programmes in respective fields including academicians, industry experts and learners on a common platform. * Integrate frequent industry-visits to enable real-time learning by providing opportunities for educational institutions to visit their factories and meet professionals to understand about the culture and the work environment. * Support educational institutions to conduct a series of mock interviews before their placement season to create a career profile for students which will help Placement officers to understand career aspirations , strengths and weakness of the career aspirant in building a career pathway. * Mentorship Programmes can be conducted frequently with the support of Industry experts who will become Career and Personal Mentors for the students in guiding them in enhancing their skills and competencies. * Strengthening the workforce with the required skills and competencies will enable educational institutions to share their expertise in partnering with organizations to resolve day to day challenges. * Organizations can become Learning Partners with educational institutions in accessing their library resources for their research and development initiatives.
The ultimate objective is to provide right candidates who become part of trainable or trained workforce.
The following career development framework is suggested to bridge the gap:
1. Foundational Competencies
2. Industry-Related Competencies
3. Occupation Related Competencies
4. Management Competencies
5. Career Development Process
6. Interview Skills
Briefly Explained as follows:
1. Foundational Competencies:
Foundational Competencies provide the foundation for success and are essential to a large number of occupations and industries. Employers have identified a link between foundational competencies and job performance. Foundational competencies are a prerequisite to learn industry specific skills:
1.1. Personal Effectiveness
Personal Effectiveness Competencies are essential for all life roles—those roles as a member of a family, of a community, and of the larger society. Though not exclusive to the competencies needed for a successful career or role in the workplace, these competencies are valued by employers, and are often referred to as "soft skills." Personal effectiveness competencies are generally learned in the home or community and reinforced and honed at school and in the workplace. They represent personal attributes that may present some challenges to teach or assess.
1.2. Academic Competencies
Academic Competencies refers to critical competencies primarily learned in an academic setting, as well as cognitive functions and thinking styles. They serve as the foundation for Occupation and Industry Specific Competencies.

1.3. Workplace Competencies
Workplace Competencies represent those skills and abilities that allow individuals to function in an organizational setting. Workplace competencies are generally applicable to a large number of occupations and industries.
2. Industry Related Competencies:
Industry Competencies are specific to an industry or industry sector. Industry wide technical competencies cut across industry sectors making it possible to create career lattices where a person can move easily across industry sectors.
2.1. Industry Wide Technical Competencies
Industry-Wide Technical Competencies represent the knowledge, skills and abilities needed by all occupations within an industry. Industry representatives need to specify and define these competencies for each industry
2.2. Industry Sector Technical Competencies
Industry-Specific Technical Competencies represent the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics needed by all occupations within an industry segment (e.g., the Chemical Manufacturing segment of the Manufacturing Industry). Industry representatives need to specify and define these competencies for each specific industry.
3. Occupation Related Competencies
Occupation related competencies are applied 1) to define performance in a workplace, 2) to design competency based curriculum, 3) articulate requirements for an occupational credential such as for a Professional Certification. High demand occupations related competencies are matched with critical professional industry certifications.
3.1. Occupation Specific Knowledge Competencies
All occupations require a specific knowledge base, over and above that which is required for occupations in the industry as a whole. Occupation-Specific Knowledge Areas can be used as a basis for specifying more detailed knowledge areas required for work in a specific occupation.

3.2. Occupation Specific Technical Competencies
Building on Occupation-Specific Knowledge Areas, all occupations require certain technical competencies. Often, these competencies are specific to a particular occupation, organization. Industry representatives need to specify and define these competencies for each specific occupation. Occupation-Specific Knowledge Areas is used to identify or develop Occupation-Specific Technical Competencies.
3.3. Occupation Specific Requirements
Occupation-Specific Requirements includes requirements such as certification, specialized educational qualifications, or physical and training requirements and are specific to a particular occupation, organization. Industry representatives specify requirements that are specific to the key occupation(s) in a given industry sector.
4. Management Competencies
Management Competencies are specific to supervisory and managerial occupations.
5. Career Development Process
The career development is a process that connects career aspirants with necessary preparation to identify opportunities that matches the career aspirations. It is phased into resume building, career profiling, and competency mapping.
6. Interview Skills:
The interview skills prepares an individual to become successful in securing a job opportunity. It involves training individuals with skills necessary before the interview, during the interview and after the interview.
The above career development framework enables educational institutions to cater to the holistic growth of the individual and contribute to the workforce for emerging economies.

Bridge Durability
It is important that the collaborative initiatives are documented and made accessible for employers, educators and parents as repository to understand and comprehend about career pathways and career growth potential in various sectors and industries.
Clearly stated learning objectives and learning outcomes will enable learners to understand themselves better and set career goals. While educators would start to think more carefully about what they teach and how they connect their students to the job market, employers will be more assertive in recruiting the right candidates.
Making the journey of careers fun and challenging will strengthen the bridge durability.
Conclusion
Instead of employers pointing to educators for producing candidates who aren’t meeting their expectations and educators pointing to employers for expecting too much from a fresher.
Both ends should step into one another’s worlds to understand the issues and challenges and bridge the two worlds.
Thus converting our demographic bonus into a boon and achieve production of the skilled workforce that the world demands.
Let’s pave the ideal way forward that will strengthen the process of quality and inclusive education.