Indians lack skill sets to be employed: IBM CEO
MUMBAI: Global technology firm IBM chief Ginni Rometty has said Indians lack the required skill sets even as new-age jobs galore, and exhorted all to look at education beyond obtaining/giving away degrees.
The $180-billion domestic software industry directly employs over 4 million people. In remarks that come amid similar concerns voiced by other tech leaders domestically, Rometty, the chairman, president and chief executive of IBM, said this is a global problem and not just limited to Indian shores.
“In India, you have the same issues. Open jobs, (but) no matching skill sets,” she said, speaking at a company conference here on Wednesday.
“You have got to believe in a few different things than I think you believed in the past. One is to believe that skills are perhaps more important than a degree,” Rometty said, amid reports of huge unemployment among qualified engineers who when employed at the entry level are paid much lower than those semi-skilled with experience.
There have been reports that nearly three-fourths of engineers and B-school graduates are not employable at all, speaking volumes about the quality of both the academics as well as the admission process in the country’s education systems. According to private economic think tank CMIE data, as of Febru- ary, there were as many as 31.2 million youth actively looking for jobs. This is in a country where over 60% of the 1.35 billion population are under 35.
“It can be that you can have folks with less than a university degree, but participate well in this industry,” Rometty said.
Contrary to perceptions of jobs being in short supply, she said there are jobs aplenty and an equivalent number of people looking for them, but the skill sets are not matching, which is the real problem.
She said businesses and governments have to work together to solve the issue at hand.