All about Education, Employment and Employability

An attempt to share what we see, observe and learn from our daily experiences in the world of education, employment, employability and beyond!!

[indiaedublog-blog]

Interviews - Are they really a Science?

Interviews are genuinely quite crazy. It such an intimate interaction between two people with several ambient parameters affecting judgement. To my mind, it is close to impossible to ensure repeatability in interviews.

It has happened, to us at CoCubes.com, that we have rejected somebody and then 6 months later, ended up hiring the same person- and the person then ends up doing a great job- Obviously, this doesn't speak too highly of the levels of standardization of our hiring processes. It doesn't obviously happen all the time, but I know it has happened once. And this makes me wonder about the scientific'ness' of the process.

But the larger point I am trying to draw attention towards is that, students should not hasten to read into interview results. Inspite of existing pressures to get a job, students have to, with some maturity, understand, that results of an interview can in no logical way imply anything negative or positive about the innate capabilities of the student. 

If possible, the student should try to learn from the experience, any clear objective actionable things; The interviewer should aim to be polite, forthcoming, and sincere in his/her feedback to the candidate. The student should look for the silver lining, believe in his/her own abilities and move on (stay connected to the interviewer by email, Linked In- drop in a Hi- How are you? What you are doing now? - six months from interview). 

Ofcourse, as I write this, I am drawn back to the drawing board to increased standardization in our own interview process- which will give me a more peaceful sleep!

Good Night- at least to you!

[indiaedublog-blog]

Engineer or a diploma holder - Who would you hire?

Gone are the days when an engineering degree guaranteed a job even before a student passed out of college. Why should a company hire a student who neither has any technical knowledge nor the desire of acquiring it at his workplace. Talk to any manufacturing organisation and more often than not you will hear unequivocal view about engineers from today's breed: 

 A diploma student is better than an engineer because:

He is more grounded

He wants to make it big in his life because he belongs to a lower middle class family. had his father had any money, he would have been studying in an engineering college

He wants to prove to the world that he too can be an achiever. He wants to show to his engineer friends that he too got a job

Given all this, he does not think that it is below his dignity to work on the shop floor or to get his hands dirty. For him the colour of the collar does not matter, all that matters is that he has a job

Last but not the least, he knows his technical subjects much more that his engineer friends

I met a very senior VP of a large sugar manufacturing firm and the discussion drifted towards this topic. He went ahead and said, "All these engineering students come to college in their dad's cars just to show off and pass time while a sincere diploma students slogs his days in a workshop in a government polytechnic. If I hire this engineer he will ask for more money for doing less work and will leave my organisation in 1 year any which way.  So Alok, why should I hire him and not a diploma?"

I had no answer to this question. His arguments sounded correct and logical. It did not make business sense for him to hire an engineer. Finally it struck me (though I did not say this to the person). An engineer (if wants to) gets a better exposure for 4 years in multiple courses while a diploma student becomes an expert in one domain. So an engineer is more rounded and can do multiple things while a diploma student may know only about his area of knowledge. Saying so does not take anything away from the technical knowledge engineer can possess if he wants to acquire them. neither does this imply that diploma students are only good at technical stuff and cannot multi-task. All I am trying to say here is an engineer and a diploma student both are needed in an organisation, the ratio of these is totally driven by the organisation's people strategy and product strategy. An engineer may not be useful working on machines but a good engineer can work wonderfully in production planning or R&D roles.

The debate can go on for ever. There is no right or wrong answer here. However, the very fact that industry is questioning the merit of engineers is a cause of worry. The education quality in some of the engineering institutions is actually bad and a lot needs to be done to ensure that a degree course does not lose its value and prestige.

Alok

[indiaedublog-blog]

Education- Why? What?

The logical thing is to begin with a basic understanding of what Education is? Education in my humble opinion is nothing but a systematic process of learning. Learning fundamentally comes through experience- in the literal sense of the word. I experience the sound of an aircraft- I learn that it is loud. I experience the touch of a hot bowl- I learn that it can be painful. etc.

When there can be a system of giving planned exposure to different concepts (again, anything around us, is but a concept)- it is called an education. This is what happens at everyday schools, colleges, etc. 

So the obvious question becomes- who defines this so called 'systematic experience'- Who says, addition must come before multiplication or more fundamentally, that addition must be there at all?? 

This is derived from an end goal of creating value in this consumer driven world. 

Therefore, one must be equipped with the tools to add value- In general, the more value you add the more money (currency- a derivation of demand and supply of all consumables in the world) you make.

So- if the world needs more computer programmers- our 'education system' shifts to creating more 'computer programmers' and coaches/teaches them on everything from 'Addition' to 'Complex Mathematics' to 'Syntax' of different languages etc.

Obviously, this comes at a fundamental cost of generalizing people as resources who are now meant to solve a certain purpose- for example, art may be deemed as a lesser value add and hence, art has only one class in a week as opposed to math which has 5 classes- And since our system is also made to judge its own effectiveness, we have exams and tests (to see if the system is solving its purpose of producing more 'Computer Programmers')- And now, in this test, somebody who is more inclined to Art will suffer more over someone who is inclined to 'Math'. So suddenly, the student more inclined towards 'Art' is a lesser being in this 'system' designed to produce 'Computer Programmers'.

As all of us are intellectuals in our own right- As we read this, one may want to revolt against this or may believe that this does not happen- But look around you- this is exactly what happens- How many times, did the girl, who was awesome at Painting in school actually become the Head Girl? Or did the girl with great marks in Math/Science etc. become the Head Girl? 

Sad- but true- this is but, the very nature of our system. Creating a system to harness the diversity of human potential will be by definition like the long tail of any market- It will very rarely be mainstream.

This is what mainstream education is - and this is why it is the way it is. It is designed to serve a purpose.

Sameer

[indiaedublog-blog]

Welcome to IndiaEduBlog

Hi there

Writing a blog is one thing, trying to create a blog to share our daily experiences of meeting new and interesting people , encountering different and sometimes embarrassing-sometime interesting and sometimes tough situations is a different thing. And, ensuring that all these remain focused to a common theme of education and career system of India is slightly more tricky. You might be wondering who are these guys and what will they write about here. 

We are part of CoCubes, a 4 year old technology startup that is trying to bring a revolution to the way campus recruitment happened (yeah, the past tense is used on purpose, we have already changed the system a lot) in India. We believe in one simple mission and vision - to impact the career of each and every student of India (and possibly of anywhere in world tomorrow). Some may think of these as very high meaning words but for us, these are the words that drive us to wake up in the morning everyday and sleep peacefully every night. We carry these words on our heart - literally so!!

India has 25000+ colleges out of which 4 million students pass out every year. Out of these 2800+ are just engineering colleges adding 8 lakh engineers to the workforce every year. And this number will keep going up evry year to cater to the yound population of India. There are just not enough institutes for higher education to absorb the K12 students. We will talk about employment for these 4 million students, we will talk about the employability levels of this massive workforce that can actually propel our country to next level of development. 

This blog though is not an official or an unofficial marketing channel for CoCubes. What you will find here is nothing but an honest account of what goes on in industry and educational institutes around the country. We keep traveling to all parts of the country to meet new people and hence are exposed to new ideas, themes, policies, idiosyncrasies, illogical biases, stereotypes, beliefs and faiths. Hence the thought, why not share all of this with a larger audience who if nothing else, can have a little fun reading about all of this. We will not preach or proctor but you may end up debating on certain issues. You may agree to what we write, or you may disagree to it or we may agree to disagree, the intent is to create an atmosphere for a healthy and educated debate and discussion. 

If you feel that you want to share something which might be relevant to larger audience, please get in touch. We will publish your ideas, views here with due recognition.

Lets hope that we are able to bring about the revolution we want to bring to the education system of India. 

Cheers

Alok and Sameer