By 2015 West Bengal will be deprived of 1, 30,000 skilled resources, according to the report given by CII – PWC Skill Gap Study released in Kolkata. The major reason for this shortfall is the gap between skills acquired by students during their college period and those that the employers expect from its new employees.
The study covers the sectors like iron and steel, agro-based industries, petroleum and petrochemicals, leather, gems and jewellery, hardware, IT &ITeS, tourism, real estate and construction, retail, R&D and healthcare.
The study conducted so far has concluded that manufacturing sector along with service sector would have major manpower requirement in West Bengal.
Narrowing it down to the manufacturing sector, the iron and steel industry will have the highest requirement of 20, 000 direct recruits on the other hand petrochemicals needs 7, 000-7, 500 direct recruits. While other small manufacturing sectors will have a requirement of 30,000, direct recruits for sectors like food processing and leather industries.
There will be a lot growth in direct recruitment in various leading services sector including construction and real estate followed by IT/ITeS , retail, tourism, healthcare and R & D. The future estimates have been promising indicating that the demand for skilled resources in IT/ITeS/BPO sector would be around 115,000-120,000, with 70,000-80,000 in organized retail. In real estate and construction, there would be an additional requirement of 80,000 – 120,000 skilled personnel. In healthcare, there would an additional requirement of 5,000 – 7,000 qualified MBBS/MD doctors and 20,000 – 30,000 qualified nurses.
While the report talks about growth numbers it also raises concerns on the qualitative skill front of students passing out.
Some of the key functional skill gaps listed by the report are;

• Not having practical knowledge amongst freshers – inability to link the theoretical knowledge, with real life situations.
• Fresher’s lack in their communication and inter-personal skills.

The study mentions that these gaps should be addressed by approaching the industries while designing the academic course structure.
While there should be a relook at the course curriculum across the country and large participation of industries in designing the academic courses, students also should proactively look at gaining practical knowledge and industry based skills by taking up a project work or internship while he is still in college. For example an engineering graduate could look at working with a startup in their product development division working on latest technologies.

Source:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/West-Bengal-to-see-shortfall-in-skilled-manpower-by-2015/articleshow/5124830.cms

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Employment News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.