Enhancing Employability Through Training and Assessment: (A Study of Managerial Talent Pool in India)

Abstract

India's services-sector led growth has been receiving a lot of global attention. The growth is more skewed towards knowledge and skill intensive sectors and this has brought into focus the importance of skilled manpower. Fortunately, India has been blessed with the largest talent pool in the world in terms of size thanks to our higher education infrastructure. The quality of students passing out of IITs, IIM's, IIScs and many other top ranking institutions is globally recognized and this has been endorsed by the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) rankings. But recently concerns have been raised about the employability of this vast talent pool. Though the quality of students is excellent at the top tier institutions, but as we move down it declines sharply in terms of their employability. This has raised doubts about the suitability of the large talent pool, spread across a large number of institutions beyond the top tier; and questions have been raised about the actual size of the employable talent pool. This article focuses on the quality of the management graduates and how the use of employment enhancement initiatives, like assessment and training, can increase the size of employable talent pool by reaching out to inaccessible talent pool and raising their suitability through training.