Year: 2014

Skill development is career development

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Dec-14hhhSkill is a learned ability of a person to carry out a job and produce a desired result using a reasonable time and energy. Every job demands a skill. There are domain general skills and domain specific skills. The first one are skills that are common for all jobs.

Domain General Skills

The US Department of Labor has listed about 16 such basic skills. They are: ability to learn, reading competence, writing competence, computation competence, listening, oral communication, creative thinking, problem solving, ability to maintain self esteem, goal setting, planning for career development, interpersonal skills, negotiation skills, team working capability, influence, leadership.

It is important for us to know that some of the skills are imbibed at a very young age or may come inborn, many skills are learned and acquired with practice. This is especially true for domain specific skills.

Domain Specific Skills

The National Skill Development Council (NSDC) has standardized about 850 job roles, defining the skills required to perform those jobs. If you take the retail sector, about 80% of jobs are created in the following four jobs: operations assistant, cashier, sales associate, and trainee associate.

According to the National Occupational Standards (NOS) of the NSDC, each of these retail job has to be performed with certain skills. With the job description of Cashier is to “service and process all customer transactions through various tenders as per accounting principles”, the person is expected to be strong in few domain skills such as basic accounting.

Self Learning

Though there are standards for job roles. Practically not all work culture and places are common. There could be a variety of challenges that employees may face. Depending on the need to respond to the job needs, employees should take the responsibility of mapping his or her occupation and do a functional analysis – that is activities that have to be performed and the expected outcomes.

It is always a good practice to create a checklist to measure your own performance and constantly develop new skills and enhance existing skills. This will lead to career progression.

Aptitude makes all the difference

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Dec-14puA national study on employability aptitude of engineering college students, conducted recently by CoCubes, a HR assessment company, found that only 14% of male students and 11% of female students of private engineering colleges are ready for employment in corporate sector.

In contrast, about 70% of the students of Indian Institutes of Technology and about 55% of other government engineering colleges were found to be fit for employment. The study is based on a sample size of one lakh students across India. The students were asked to participate in a mock employability aptitude test and the company evaluated their quantitative, reasoning/analytical, and verbal skills to determine their employability.

Simply put aptitude is the ability of students to solve problems. A typical recruiting process starts with a filtering mechanism – companies set percentage of pass marks students have obtained in schools and colleges. The qualifying students are then tested for their aptitude, which determines the employability of students to a very large extent. This means that students who are employable are strong in these three domains.

The quantitative skills are related to arithmetic and geometry. Students need to have a good knowledge in ratios and averages, simple and compound interests, profit and loses, percentages, number systems, time and speed, trigonometry and geometry. The students are expected to have clarity and regular practice of exercises based on these concepts.

The reasoning part covers a student’s thinking capability to solve real life problems, finding relationships between people, forms and shapes and ideas, coding and decoding of words and numbers, determining data sufficiency. The reasoning skills exercise student’s brain cells by offering statement and conclusion, visual reasoning and pattern finding tasks.

Verbal skill is largely about evaluating students from the perspective of the fine art of understanding what we read. Students are required to understand the main idea of a passage , how to make an inference, and to find author’s purpose of writing, and so on.

CoCubes recommends students who would like to improve their employability aptitude to clearly understand various problem solving concepts taught in their schools and colleges and regularly practice them.

Every student an Entrepreneur

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Dec-14ggIf you thought that CADD Centre is meant for training in engineering software, think again. With its Student Entrepreneur scheme, this Asia’s largest CAD training institute, is offering an irresistible opportunity for its students to become entrepreneurs and run their own CADD Centre franchises in the location of their choice.

A  winner of best franchisor award from Franchise India several times, CADD Centre functions as an informal business school, teaching its student franchisees how to run a CAD training centre profitably. A large number of its existing franchise centres totaling about 500 today and spread over 20 countries are being run by its alumni.

The first choice of students, after completing a professional course could be a MNC job. But there are many students who are interested to be on their own. Student Entrepreneur scheme is designed to help such enterprising students to make it big as entrepreneurs and job providers.

CADD Centre hand holds student entrepreneurs in all aspects of business management – right from marketing to setting up team to managing logistics to counselling students and yes, to delivering courses adhering to world class standards. While students invest in setting up the infrastructure and the team, CADD Centre will offer its support and Rs 50,000 worth of marketing communication materials for free.

CADD Centre is keen to provide the opportunity of entrepreneurship for as many students as possible. The advantages of beginning the journey of entrepreneurship with CADD Centre network are many: The franchise model of CADD Centre is a proven one. The success rate of CADD Centre franchise is over 95%. This means students are taking only calculated risk. The franchisees enjoy complete freedom and autonomy in managing their centres. CADD Centre is a global network. It is the authorized training partner of many global software companies like Bentley. Hence CADD Centre is trusted by students and professionals across the country and the world for their training needs.

We at CADD Centre believe that every student can be job provider – that too in their own field of engineering, while having the satisfaction of making engineering students employable and engineering professionals’ productivity. If you think you are cut out for entrepreneurship, do not think twice. Make use of CADD Centre’s Student Entrepreneur scheme today. For more details, visit www.caddcentre.com.

It takes a solid approach to make designs Work

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Solidworks is a 3D CAD design software that runs on Microsoft platforms. The developer of the product, Dassault Systems, France, has launched the new version, christened Solidworks 2015, in September, 2014.

Solidworks is based on solid modeling method. That is, it uses mathematical and computer modeling of 3D solids to create, exchange, visualize, animate and annotate digital models of physical objects.

The modules of SolidWorks 2015 vastly improves productivity, work processes, and reduce operating costs. There are six major modules: 3D CAD, Simulation, Product Data Management, 3D Experience, Technical Communication, and Electrical Design.

Dec-14_cThe key features of 3D CAD are CAD design, revision control, costing, parts and assembly modeling, Photoview 360, tolerance analysis, and CAD library. The Simulation software helps designers test their product designs for real world conditions without having to develop a live prototype. Engineers can do structural analysis, thermal analysis, structural optimization, fatigue analysis, electronics cooling and motion analysis, among others.

 

Engineers can find, repurpose files, parts, drawings and share design information with Solidworks Product Data Management module. In addition they can automate the workflows. The module is used also for file management, design reuse, and revision management. The Electrical Design software helps engineers quickly plan the embedded electrical systems. The Technical Communication module helps designers produce product manuals, manufacturing and assembly instructions, training system manuals, installation instructions, maintenance and repair instructions and even create interactive product demonstrations.

SolidWorks 2015 delivers solutions for a wide array of industries and markets. Users can easily enhance the aesthetics of consumer products and apparel, and simulate construction machinery, building infrastructure and machine tools better than ever before.

Thanks to such a comprehensive set of modules that address all design needs of engineers, Solidworks has been a widely used engineering software tool. It has over two million users in about 165,000 companies cutting across a wide cross section of industry – from automobiles to petrochemical industries. To know more about SolidWorks and the courses available, contact your nearest CADD Centre.

Soft skills can help you land an IT job

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nov14-glAfter a couple of years of lull, India’s Information Technology companies are back to hiring. For instance, TCS is planning to hire 25,000 people from the campuses in 2014-15, and hire 35,000 people by 2015-16. Infosys said that it would hire between 15,000-16,000 freshers for the current financial year. from established IT companies, there are more startup companies that are making a beeline for the placement season.

However, the employers are looking also for soft skills in freshers. Mr Ajay Mukherjee, Vice President and Global President and Global Head – Human Resources, TCS is quoted saying that from an improvement point of view, “we have been telling institutes that communications and soft skills are something that can be looked at…which will make people a bit more ready.”

Only few engineering colleges have taken proactive steps to impart soft skills training for students right from the first year. The concept of soft skills is not new and in the past these skills have been known by many other names, often prefixed by life, success, survival, people, communication and interpersonal, team and negotiation skills and the like.

According to Francis Petes, author of Soft Skills and Professional Communication, the key components of soft skills are:

Self Image: You need to have an accurate picture of yourself that is you should understand what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Interpersonal Skills: Self control, empathy and motivating those who operate from a different competitive framework .

Branding Skills :You should promote yourself but also know the subtle difference between branding and bragging.

Networking skills: The essence of networking involves meeting people and socializing with charm and wit, building and nurturing relationships.

Assertiveness: The art of dealing with difficult people without upsetting them.

Conflict Management: Resolving disputes amicably by going to the root of the problem and working out a solution.

 

Communication Skills: It is the most important part of soft skills. In business it is very important to be able to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing.

 

Stress management: Stress happens to be a part and parcel of our professional life. However, proper training in stress management can help you create a balanced and effective lifestyle. It includes among others self awareness.

 

Since placement record is a key performance metric for engineering colleges, it is worth investing their time and effort in providing soft skills training to their students. But students can take the responsibility on their own and hone their soft skills with the help of professional trainers and training institutions, if they are serious about getting hired.