Quality Students: Employable and Deployable
Students are the deliverables of educational institutions to their customers, namely, organizations. Organizations expect quality students.
If students are not “fit for use” (read: not of the expected quality), organizations have to invest in teaching them additional skills. This induction / orientation programme can stretch from 10 days to 10 months. At a full salary.
Next, since this student-quality problem is chronic, organizations budget heavily for induction programmes. As a result, the problem goes off the top-management radar. The related Cost Of Poor Quality (COPQ) is neatly legitimized.
As a remedy, organizations should benchmark their own purchasing practices for goods and services. In quality sensitive organizations, the purchase department buys process capability, supplier by supplier. Example: Maruti, Bajaj Auto, Tata Cummins, and more. They work as partners with their suppliers and help them to achieve superior quality, while simultaneously achieving joint lower costs.
Having said that, why can’t organizations work with educational institutions to improve the quality of students? Making students fit for use. The advantages of this approach are:
- Apart from being employable, students become deployable in organizations, from the start
- The COPQ of a formal department for the induction programme in an organization, reduces significantly
- The salaries of new recruits during the induction programme, get almost eliminated
- Placement performance of the educational institutions, improve.
So what are the mysterious skills that organizations seek from quality recruits?
- Structured Problem Solving
- Facilitation and Team Building
- Logical and Creative Thinking
- Understanding Customer Perceptions and Expectations.
Are you aware of any other?
Random Thoughts:
- Do we have managers in organizations who can teach the desired skills?
- Can this concept be adopted by municipal corporations?
- Can jobs transform to meaningful employment, nation-wide?
