HYDERABAD: Calling it an attempt to fill in for the non-functional government employment exchange, the Indian Institute of Job Training (IIJT), a vocational training institute, organized a job fair for youth in the city on Saturday. Of the 375 candidates, who turned up at the venue, the recruitment firm TeamLease Services and IIJT could select only 55 based on employability and skills. “Nearly 68 per cent of the graduates are unemployable due to lack of interpersonal and soft skills. The day-long job fair, which is held every month at different centres in the country, is a platform that introduces job seekers to potential employers and helps students in assessing their drawbacks,” explains Shajan Samuel, divisional head of IIJT.The lack of employable skills among graduates and under-graduates was highlighted as the major problem for the gap between job-seekers and opportunities available.“Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges especially need to inculcate the right expectations among the students that jobs are not aplenty in domain specific fields. The large chunk of jobs are generated by retail and marketing sectors but most of the graduates have a mind-block against sales-based jobs,” says Shajan Samuel, who blames the lack of quality control on the mushrooming institutes.Theoretically-oriented curriculum leaves little scope for development of interpersonal skills and most of the candidates do not know how to shape a curriculum vitae or face the interviews, believes the divisional head of the vocational institute.IIJT has also been signed on as a partner for the Employment Generation and Marketing Mission (EGMM) scheme launched by the Department of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh to train rural unemployed youth, especially from financially poor background.The first batch of students trained under the government subsidized scheme have been placed after training for a period of 45 days. The enrollment for the second phase of students has begun and training will be imparted across regional centres including Rangareddy, Mahboobnagar, Nizamabad, Warangal, Vizag, Vizianagaram, Srikakulam, East Godavari, Krishna, West Godavari-Eluru, Guntur, Prakasam-Ongole, Chittoor and Khammam.The vocational training institute will train the youth mobilized under the EGMM in skills such as basics of accounting, data entry operations, retail sales as well as skills such as plumbing and mobile repair among others.The institute aims to train and place 6000 youth by March 2012, and placement drives are conducted for each batch of students.“The plan is to complete 10 to 12 batches a year and guarantee 100 per cent placements under the agreement with the government. In the last batch, we had 89 students of whom 75 were placed,” recalls Shajan.
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