A 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.