A research-based report ‘Graduate Employability: Employers’ Perception Survey Report 2018’ to assess the skills gap in Pakistani graduates was recently published to understand the employers’ satisfaction with Pakistani graduates and their abilities. The report was published by Naqeebz Consulting, a business-consulting firm.
212 corporate respondents were canvassed, encompassing business owners, C-Level executives and HR leaders from a range of businesses, SMEs to Large National Corporations, and MNCs.
Speaking at the occasion, the author of this report expressed his views that, “It was really shocking for me once I know that roughly 80% of industrials leaders told me that we had never been approached by any academia for any help or support”.
A balanced blend of corporate Pakistan was created so a well-structured and educated survey could be conducted, one that can help to restructure the educational environment for students. 212 organizations encompassing 25 industries that collectively employ over 500,000 people were engaged, which belonged to
- 20% to IT, Telecom, BPO, Call Center industry,
- 16% to FMCG, Manufacturing,
- 14% to Retail, Fashion, Hospitality, Food,
- 12% to Professional Services,
- 9% to Education & Training, Research,
- 8% to the Banking, Finance & Insurance sectors.
The targeted audience for this report includes Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), faculty members of public and private universities, degree awarding institutes, technical and vocational training institutes, professional training institutes, industry and business leaders, policy-makers, media, and the public in general.
Raja Yasir Hamayun Sarfraz, Minister Higher Education Punjab, said, “It’s really alarming that if we ask a graduate to write a page on any topic, he/she cannot write a single page. We must sit and think what we are teaching in universities.”
Alarmingly, the results conclusively highlighted that a whopping 78% of the employers are not satisfied with the quality of fresh graduates. Senior leaders are unhappy with the inability of graduates to justify their higher grades at the mere interview or assessment stage.
This might be because 77% of the employers are dissatisfied with the content and claims made by graduates on their CV/resume. 82% of employers cited that they do not hire fresh graduates merely on the basis of ‘high grades’ as what is essentially required to support decision-making in the recruitment process, is a blend of employability & enterprise skills to academic degrees.
Yaha to Market Ye Hai Fresh Graduate Must be from LUMS NAMAL, IBA Etc Hona Chaheyh :
Jo K Mumkin nahi
From NCBA beat them all with my current knowledge … ?? Uni doesn’t matter beta …. Wahan k b chawal mn nikal k deta when i ll test them …. Sb fail hain basically teaching system is fail alsooo main fault
A bit full of yourself, aren’t you? Here’s a tip: try to be humble. Being arrogant doesn’t suit even the likes of Elon Musk, and I doubt you’re more talented than he is.
University absolutely does matter for first job. After a few years of experience nobody cares if you went to IBA, LUMS, or bloody Yale. As long as you have had a good track record and employment history you’ll get hired.
There should be any testing system for hiring candidates not their experience or history. This is suppressing new and quality people for entering in this field. While there was government of my neighbor party they got many people hired in various posts while they had no knowledge about anything and in return they are getting hired in other companies.
They want to hire fresh graduates with the experience of 2-3 years while paying pennies. Obviously they are not satisfied with the quality of graduates.
And you hit the nail on the head. Fresh graduates have to either accept 5k-10k/month jobs or they’re forced to do unpaid internships; all in the name of “experience and exposure.” In the absence of proper labour protection laws fresh grads can’t do anything about it.
Of course these companies are b****ing about the quality of fresh grads. If they acknowledge that the fresh grads in this country are halfway decent then they’ll have to pay good salary to those they treat as slave labour.
Making trouble ,looking for trouble,making life a misery,worst people are themselves.
82% Employers are not satisfied with fresh graduates, then ask them whats the point of advertising and hiring fresh graduates if you arent going to train them satisfactorily and the most important point, what interview, what assessment test this is all joke, in response the fresh graduates with 3-2 years experience should be dissatisfied with these employers.
i want to add something , your work experience during degree isnt included.
This article holds truth in it & I believe only fresh grades are ranting in the comments.
Yes, there is some truth in it but those employers forgot to mention, how much they are willing to pay to a fresh grad. Most of them want to hire a fresh grad without any pay.
I don’t know about other industries but in IT/SE/CS many employers want to hire grads either without any pay or with 10-20k pay and want them to have skills of a Senior Software Developer. Many Android and Unity developers with 2-3 years of experience are being paid 30-40k.
Yup this was expected a long ago,practically our education system is a mess,no critical thinking is appreciated at graduation level and students coming from the graduation mostly are in a dear set of mind as Old Professors are conservative in their thinking & drivers in their approach,they are non flexible and rigid people mostly not all,their personalities reflects in their students as well so practically speaking during hiring process mostly don’t know about critical thinking, initiative , mental agility as these skills comes with experience plus students lacks confidence in their personalities as they are used to lived like it in universities as lean and submissive students, never to challenge anything & accepting everything that in return kill their confidence.
On the other hand corporate culture environment is based on the system they have migrated internationally from their global offices which also needs local culture adjustments which HR people sometimes do sometimes forget, second thing everyone is expecting to hire a genius candidate for the job,they want to ask themselves that do everyone is genius in Pakistan?
Overall our degrees are not in relevance to our job market except MBA which ironically is acceptable everywhere due to a MBA monopoly in Pakistan,
Total revamp of education system is needed priority for development of skills set in students to face their upcoming Professional life.
This is the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan to allign everything in the right direction forward.
100% agree. But unfortunately:
-Employers don t have right to complain because they prefer fresh grads in greed of hiring them on low salary than somewhat experienced work force available, and thats true for majority employers not all of them
-Commercially run institutions only need money. So if you give them money to graduate a donkey, they will accept and hand it to you after stipulated time with his degree hanging in its neck, saying Congrats, your donkey is a graduate now
Universities ki bhi ghalti hai k Un k pass teachers outdated hain but employers bhi to chahta hai k Fresh graduate 2 year experience employee k equal ho.
Corporates intentionally hire such graduates, such employees yield slow at the start but later get much profitable. But problem is the paki economy which is more like a pigeon which could easily be fly away with a mere Crack, no stability, & you wud find yourself helpless even after spending several years in the market. Govt hasn’t been able to develop a system that ohr economy shan’t be destabilized after every 5 years.
Yes its true.Fault is at both ends. Fresh graduates a part even experienced one cant even write a single page. universities are to be blamed for this but when it comes to employer they pay minimum wage to fresh graduate which demotivate them plus the culture is ” ic ko kam sikha dia to hamari nokri gae” . Need to change this thing.
Yaha log bht bhookhy ha IT field me kehty k fresher 9 ghanty kam b kr jae or wo b free me. Or 3 month bad 8 10 hazar pay start kr dety ha wtf….
Fresh grads in all over the world go through the process of training and then being selected by the right department. In Pakistan, corporate need a MBA grad with 3.0 or above CGPA and with prior experience. Salary would be 25-30k with no perks no bonus and HR official timings will be 9-6 and originally working 9-9. Then they expect energy in their employees, creativity, with innovative ideas.
Employers are so disatisfied that they would rather hire their competent sons, daughters, bhanja bhatija on positions of merit. Because obviously the rest are incompetent or ill equiped to handle professional tasks at hand.
Truth be told, employers use this as an excuse to detest joblessness as a problem and secure lively hoods of their own families and communities first. So please employers, dont give us this crap. You dont want us, we get it. But dont hide behind the 2.5% css logic.
Actually, the overall observations suggest that Pakistan is low at producing human capital/skillful labor which is necessary for any country to attract foreign investments. Deep down, the extractive institutions and the education system need to be reformed. The education lags can be covered by focusing on the policies which are adopted by developed countries, like Finland’s education system. Hence, to incentivize the corporate and other sectors, Pakistan has to do something over the matter of the concern.
Basically Pakistani employers are worst of it’s kind on Earth. Specially in IT sector.
though I’m in 6th semester of BSCS(VUP). I applied for several positions in Lahore and Islamabad. They interviewed me like I’m somewhere in Amazon, Google, Facebook or Microsoft office. but at the end they sent me offers around 40K. I got an offer from a UAE based company with 4 times higher pay.
These paki employers need robots at very cheap price.
They can’t afford skilled graduates. They aren’t willing to pay but at the same time they aren’t satisfied with the skills of fresh graduates.
They should must learn first how to attract talented guys.
Pakistani employers are worst of its kind on Earth specially in IT sector .. They interviewed us like I am in Google, Facebook or Microsoft office but at the end they offered 15K, 20K .. As a matter of fact these Paki employers need robots at very cheap price .. They can’t afford skilled/talented graduates , they are not willing to pay but at the same time aren’t satisfied with skills of fresh graduates .. Even they are not willing to pay for their training as it could increase organization budget ..