Mahesh K.V. now shaves every day, dresses better and feels comfortable speaking to women.
Fifty days into a finishing school for those who aspire to enter information technology (IT) sector, Mahesh says he feels this is his last chance to get himself together—and that’s why his family dug into savings to pay for the programme. “Most of my friends are already earning thousands of rupees while I am not,” said the 22-year-old civil engineering graduate from Gulbarga, Karnataka. “I have to give this my best shot.”
To transition from civil engineering to the more lucrative IT, or so he hopes, Mahesh enrolled at the Raman International Institute of Information Technology in Mysore.
The tech sector’s insatiable hunger for talent, coupled with demand from students such as Mahesh, is spawning the growth of finishing schools that specialize in IT across the country. And while some enterprises and academic institutions see this as a business opportunity, even governments are making plans to set up such schools in their quest to link the unemployed with a piece of India’s boom.
“Though India produces a large number of engineering graduates every year, employability of most of these graduates is a big concern,” says Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice-president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), an industry body. “Many institutes lag in addressing the skill requirements of the industry and individual companies are increasingly finding it too expensive to tackle this.”
By some estimates, nearly two-thirds of India’s 350,000 engineering graduates every year need re-skilling; only about 10-15% of the approximately two million other students graduating in other disciplines are suitable for employment in IT services and related industries such as business process outsourcing.
Indeed, scores of finishing schools have existed across India for some time to address these shortcomings—offering courses to improve spoken English, acquire American or British accents or to learn other skills, from usage of cutlery to interview techniques. But the IT finishing schools are a newer breed.
They do not just train students on people skills, but also impart knowledge that the technology sector needs but isn’t widely taught in engineering colleges.
Raman International, which claims that it set up one of the first IT finishing schools, was inundated with applications for its inaugural batch—more than 3,000 applications for 70 places. “There is a large chunk of students who are not from elite engineering colleges and who need additional training. Our aim is to cater to this segment,” says Catherine Suchita J., business head at Raman’s IT finishing school.