Title:

Identification and Classification of Employability skills of fresh graduates from the

Software services industry requirements perspective.

Authors:

Suhas Bhosale, Delivery Manager - Engineering, Extentia Information Technology,

Pune, India

Prof. Dr. Ashutosh Kulkarni, Reader, Vishwakarma University, Pune, India

Title:

Identification and Classification of Employability skills of fresh graduates from the

Software services industry requirements perspective.

Abstract:

In the present world of information technology industries and its increasingly competitive
nature, cost reduction (without affecting quality) and Time to market has inevitably taken prime
importance for any software company. This is definitely an important aspect specifically for
startups and small/mid-scale companies. There is always some amount of investment in terms
of time/cost/efforts is reserved to get the fresh (inexperienced) employees up to the speed. Any
savings within those areas without affecting the quality is surely looked-for. The small-scale
companies in the software services area are constantly looking for employees with expertise in
more than one area. This not only saves the human resource cost but also lead to better service
offering within less time. These companies provide services in different areas where multiple
technical competencies of a resource are desirable. Companies are investing in fresh graduates
in order to educate them with development processes and methodologies. Also, some amount
of cost/efforts are needed to elevate those employees to understand and learn the latest
technology trends. Any fresh graduate with prior knowledge of processes/niche technologies
(i.e. with higher employability) may have a definite impact on the time/cost/efforts saving for
companies.

Cambridge dictionary has defined employability as “the skills and abilities that allow you to
be employed” (“EMPLOYABILITY | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary,”
n.d.). The objective of this paper is to revisit these skills based on software services company
requirements and classify them considering Quantitative and Qualitative aspect. This will help
to set the ground for further research work regarding bridging the gap between fresh graduates’
skill set and software services company requirements.

Keywords:

Employability, Employability skills, Software services company, software product company,

fresh graduates.

1. Introduction
India skills report 2019 (“AICTE- CII Industry Link Survey Report 2018 and India Skill Report
2019 | Government of India, All India Council for Technical Education,” n.d.) is a joint
initiative of AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), CII (Confederation of Indian
Industry), PeopleStrong (Human Resource Technology Company), Wheebox (Online Talent
assessment Company), AIU (Association of Indian Universities), and UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme). This initiative is started in the year 2014. According to the India
skills report 2019, the employability index in India is rising at a consistent rate for engineering
graduates. Below chart is extracted from the same report.

The terms like Employability, Industry readiness, Job readiness are often used
interchangeability. Education domain experts are taking a lot of efforts to raise the
Employability of fresh graduates and India Skills report 2019 is reflecting the same. However,
due to the present high growth rate of technology and its adoption, there are certain challenges
faced by the Software industry. It would be interesting to have a look at the Article written by
Forbes Technology Council regarding Industry’s biggest challenges in the year 2019 (“13 Tech
Experts Predict The Industry’s Biggest Challenges In 2019,” n.d.). This article puts focus on
many challenges, out of which “Finding Talent” is one of the critical challenges. In this article,
Maria Alegre from chartboost.com has stated “Talent is the main driver of execution and
innovation. The biggest challenge that the tech startups are facing these days is to be able to
find great talent since it’s more globally distributed than ever”. This indicates that the
increasing Employability rate definitely is in favor of the growing talent need of software
industry. However, the assessment of growth rate against the industry requirement is not in
the scope of this paper. This paper primarily discusses the various employability skills in the
context of the software services industry.

2. Employability

Mantz Yorke, in Learning and Employability Series (Millar, n.d.) has defined Employability
as:

“A set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates
more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits
themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”. Interestingly this series also
discusses the categorization of Employability skills as Core & Key skills and transferable skills.

There are many definitions of Employability available, but the definition referred by Smith E
and Comyn P (2003) does not limit Employability skills to fresh graduates entry in
organization, rather it expands the definition to cover individual’s professional journey within
an organization (Smith & Comyn, n.d.). The definition is, “Employability skills are defined as
skills required not only to gain employment but also to progress within an enterprise so as to
achieve one’s potential and contribute successfully to enterprise strategic directions”. So it
indicates Employability is equally important for both fresh graduates and existing
professionals.

In simple terms, Employability can be described as a set of certain required skill sets in order
to get paid by via getting employed. While elaborating “Perspectives on Employability and
employability skills”, Rajnish Kumar Misra and Khushbu Khurana have mentioned, "The
concept of employability changes according to the job requirements, proactiveness or schema
of an individual in perceiving things" (Misra & Khurana, 2017). So, change of Employability
concept based on Job Requirements strengthens the requirement of evaluating Employability
skills specifically from Software services industry perspective.

In India, AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) is certainly making efforts to
increase students’ employability by introducing changes in syllabus and course structure
(“AICTE to make changes in engineering curriculum to create more jobs in India - Education
Today News,” n.d.). And same has been also reflected via latest India Skills Report 2019.
However, on the other side, it seems that not much work has been done in order to gauge the
fresh candidate's performance in job and understand the industry’s assessment of these
candidates’ readiness against industry expectations.

In today’s technology era, specifically in the software development domain – the rate of
emerging of new technologies is very high. This has increased the importance and need of
proactiveness and learning attitude. One must be versatile to learn and acquire knowledge
regarding new technologies consistently in order to sustain and progress in the software
industry.

Below sections attempt to assess the various employability skills from this perspective and
gauge them based on the software services industry’s requirements. It also tries to focus on the
difference between the type of work done in the software services industry and a product
company and discusses the employability skills accordingly.

3. Basic Employability skills

Before diving into Employability skills required for a Software services company, it is
necessary to understand what are the basic skill set required for Employability. Arnau-Sabatés,
L, Marzo, M T, Jariot, M and Sala-Roca, J has proposed a IARS Employability Competence
Framework, developed by means of a collaborative and integrated approach with experts,
provides a complete picture of how employability competencies are important for preparing
young people in residential care not only for active labour insertion but also in terms of their
comprehensive development (Arnau-Sabatés, Marzo, Jariot, & Sala-Roca, 2013). The IARS
conceptual framework relates to individual’s basic employability competence and identifies
eight clusters of basic competence (those that are essential to gaining and maintaining
employment and to promotion in the workplace).

Arnau-Sabatés, L, Marzo, M T, Jariot, M and Sala-Roca, J has referred Employability skills

as competence. The skills listed in The IARS Employability Competence Framework are
breifly mentioned below (Arnau-Sabatés et al., 2013)

SELF-ORGANIZATION Preparing, managing and developing a task/work

taking into account the aims and every detail.

EDUCATIONAL-PROFESSIONAL Identifying and analysing by oneself the training

PROJECT CONSTRUCTION and work experience needed to obtain the desirable
 job, maintain it and gain promotion in the labour
market, acting proactively.

DECISIONS MAKING AND Being able to take decisions, identify problems,

PROBLEM SOLVING and resolve them in an effective and constructive
way, taking into consideration different options
and its viability.

TEAMWORK Having a good relationship with others to reach

team goals

COMMUNICATION Having knowledge for communicating in different

contexts (personal, social and labour) and through
different means (spoken and written)

PERSEVERANCE Making a sustainable effort to complete personal

proposals or tasks, despite difficulties.

FLEXIBILITY Adapting personal behaviour, ideas and emotions

when required

RESPONSIBILITY AND Accepting personal obligations and those shared

CORESPONSIBILITY with others, and being coherent

Table 1: IARS Employability Competence Framework

4. Difference between software services company and a software product company

To understand the employability skills required for a software services company, it is important
to understand the difference between a software services company and a product company.
Software product companies are primarily focused on developing products in various domains
and are aimed towards adding some value/convenience to consumers. Companies like Paytm,
Uber, and Ola fall under this type. A software services company is mainly involved in
providing services to other clients/consumers who outsource their software related work to
these companies. Companies like, Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro, TCS are software services
companies. Generally, software services companies do work across multiple domain and
technologies. On the other side, a software product company is involved in product
devolvement which might be for a specific domain and limited to particular technologies.
Silicon India Magazine July 2006 issue has an article written by Sridhar Jayanthi which puts
more light on the differences between these 2 types of companies (“Software Services Vs
Product: How is it different for you?,” n.d.). This article has listed down some differences
between the activities and dynamics of working for these two kinds of companies. Sridhar
Jayanthi has mentioned, “A software services company’s customer is typically one company
that has a specific requirement that is being satisfied through outsourcing. Although the
customer is hoping to get domain expertise, the minimum expectation from the team is the
technical skill set. In a software product company, in the long-term (preferably in the short-
term as well), the domain expertise becomes more important than just technical skill set”. She
has further mentioned, “A software services company expects its professionals to acquire a
breadth of skills to ensure he/she can fit into many different project teams. The value of a
services software consultant is directly proportionate to the number of skills in which he/she
can claim expertise. In a software product company the depth of domain and technical skills
overrides all other expertise requirements”.

So, as we have seen there is a definite difference between the type of work done by software
services and software product company, the skillset required for software services company
differs to some extent when compared to the skill set required for a software product company.

5. Important skills required for a software services company

As Job requirements for a Software services company are different than other domain, the
below section tries to put the focus on the Employability skills specifically from Software
services industry perspective.

While carrying out an analysis of Employability skills for the Information Technology sector,
Neetima Agarwal has generated Employability skills chart essentially for IT sector (Agarwal,
2014). Below listed skills are included in the Employability skills chart.

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Work Psychology
• Critical Thinking & Problem solving
• Initiative, Enterprise and Self-management
• Planning and Organising
• Learning and Adaptability
 • Technology

While carrying out A Literature Review on Employability Skills among Information

Technology Professionals, Rajnish Kumar Misra and Khushbu Khurana has come up with a
checklist of Employability Skills Characteristics (Misra & Khurana, 2017).

Table 2: Employability Skills Characteristics

If we try to analyze these 2 lists, there are many common skills across them. These skills can
broadly be classified as Qualitative and Quantitative skills and further, it can form the basis of
research regarding bridging the gap between fresh graduates’ skill set and software services
company requirements.

Considering the nature of work done in a software services company, below skills are more
important for a software services company employee.

• Technology – It is desirable having multiple technical skills to be able to survive in

progress in a software services company
• Willingness to learn, Learning Ability and Adaptability – Considering the various type
of requirements from multiple clients across multiple domains, continuous learning is
required to adapt and learn different technologies. Also due to the continuous addition
of new technologies, learning is required at every stage of employment.
• Communication – Communication plays an important role while communicating with
multiple clients across different projects.
 • Teamwork and Interpersonal skills – As the frequency of technology/type of work
change are more in case of a software services company, one resource may have to
work with different teams/resources. Being a good team player is an important factor
which has some influence on the professional growth of an employee

6. Conclusion
Though many employability skills are common across software services and software
product company, the importance/weight of those skills do differ for each type of company.
Flexibility to work on multiple technologies/teams/client is important for software services
company employee. Whereas having deeper knowledge in the product domain is more
important for a software product company.

7. References

13 Tech Experts Predict The Industry’s Biggest Challenges In 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved February
16, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/12/27/13-tech-
experts-predict-the-industrys-biggest-challenges-in-2019/#4eb81fce1bcd

Agarwal, N. (2014). Evaluating Training Effectiveness- An Analysis of Employability Skills

and Associated Training Needs in the Information Technology. University. Noida.
Retrieved from http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/49332

AICTE- CII Industry Link Survey Report 2018 and India Skill Report 2019 | Government of
India, All India Council for Technical Education. (n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2019,
from https://www.aicte-india.org/content/aicte-cii-industry-link-survey-report-2018-and-
india-skill-report-2019

AICTE to make changes in engineering curriculum to create more jobs in India - Education
Today News. (n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2019, from
https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/aicte-engineering-syllabus-to-be-
revised-to-make-students-more-employable-972916-2017-04-22

Arnau-Sabatés, L., Marzo, M. T., Jariot, M., & Sala-Roca, J. (2013). Learning basic
employability competence: a challenge for the active labour insertion of adolescents in
residential care in their transition to adulthood Learning basic employability competence:
a challenge for the active labour insertion of adolescents in. European Journal of Social
 Work, 17(2), 252–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2013.802227

EMPLOYABILITY | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved February

16, 2019, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/employability

Millar, D. (n.d.). Learning and Employability Series 1 and 2. Retrieved from

https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/hea-learning-employability_series_one.pdf

Misra, R. K., & Khurana, K. (2017). Employability Skills among Information Technology
Professionals: A Literature Review. In Procedia Computer Science (Vol. 122, pp. 63–70).
Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2017.11.342

Smith, E., & Comyn, P. (n.d.). novice workers skills development employability. Retrieved
from http://www.forschungsnetzwerk.at/downloadpub/nr2005_ncver_australia.pdf

Software Services Vs Product: How is it different for you? (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019,
from https://www.siliconindia.com/magazine-articles-
in/Software_Services_Vs_Product_How_is_it_different_for_you-FDX363558793.html