Monday, October 13, 2008

Unemployment, Youth and English- Who's Responsible

I am working with a Consultancy firm, who provided consultancy in Export/Imports, Central Excise matters, Customs, SEZ, STPI and EOU Units in India. I am working with this firm since almost 2 years and it indeed is a good reputed firm and has a good hold on clients and market. I am working as a Senior Executive and also looking after HR, IT and several other departments.

Today I want to share some of my experiences as an HR person. I recruit persons for my organisation for various departments and during interviews I come across lots of people mainly youngsters who have desires, aims and several hurdles to cross and finally want to glitter in their fields with many success tags on their chest. All of them wants to become big overnight and are full of attitude. I have never seen any down to earth youth who could be promising and could honestly answer to the questions asked to them.

Few days back I was busy with my routine work and got a flash on my cell, the number which was flashing was unknown to me, anyway I took the call and their was a guy on the other side with a hopeful voice. During my conversation with him I came to know that he is looking for a change from his present company and wants to work with us because of our name and fame in the market. I had a opening and was looking for a person specially experienced one so I readily agreed to call him for the interview in my office on the following Saturday.

On the decided day, that chap namely “Arun” appeared for the interview and I took him to the meeting room for the interview, after formal exchanges I asked him about his present company and work profile and he started it in a very unprofessional manner and his communication skills were proving that he is not at all comfortable with any of the languages which are widely spoken and accepted in India. Then and there I decided to drop him for the position I was interviewing him and gave a quick decision to him because continuing further that interview was a mere wastage of time knowingly. When I gave him a “NO”, he started pleading for the job which really irritated me; he started begging for the job despite his deficiencies and said that he is very hardworking. A special thing which I left about him is that in a span of two year he has changed 5 jobs as an Asst. manager and that only proved that he is not at all capable of facing challenges and arriving new horizons of professionalism.

Now I must share his qualifications also, he showed me a file which was overflowing with the certificates and degrees which he had acquired from several prestigious institutes and Universities in his 26 years of student life, all were satisfying but the moment he started speaking it was feeling like slapping him for not doing his homework on time. After he left I came back to my seat and again became busy in my work, but somewhere in my mind I was thinking about this guy only that why he have such a huge gap in his communication skills and despite of having several degrees why he is incompetent in the market. I kept thinking and had no answers, so I just left thinking about this.

After my dinner same evening I went to my bed for a nap but this guy was hidden somewhere in my mind and was forcing me to think about him only. I started thinking about his personality, speaking skills and writing skills which I usually check for in a candidate and I found that although he had every possible degree in his hands but a huge weakness was lying somewhere in his communication and I got my answer then and there.

In India, we talk about poverty, illiteracy, unemployment but have never thought of the reasons behind these things although we are very proud to say that several companies of this world are ready to invest and are setting up their business in India but still plenty of people are jobless and these companies are hiring people from world over for their key positions but are not even giving a chance to Indians.

This is all because although we Indians do our regular degrees and accumulate lots of knowledge regarding the current affairs, IT, Medicines, Aerospace, Automobiles but ignore the very basics of communication. We all lack communication skills in foreign languages majorly English and that is one of the reasons behind Unemployment.

I am thinking why not to device some innovative and revolutionary idea to take care of this monster “ENGLISH” which can definitely help in curbing unemployment to some extent…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Anyways friends now we all have to devise some ideas which could help our youths who are already having all the possible degrees under their belts but could not speak well and due to this weakness of theirs they could not win the races and are struggling at the basement of their careers. If anyone of you have some fresh ideas in helping curb unemployment then please revert to me on my e-mail id-roshan.pratihast@gmail.com