India produces over 6,00,000 engineers every year and that is larger than any other country in the world. Our engineering talent is respected all over the world, then why do so many students fail to secure a good job?
Bad English and Poor Communication Skills is keeping Engineers away from good jobs
According to a survey conducted in 2015 by Aspiring Minds over 97% of engineering graduates are denied a job or promotion because of their inability to speak proper English. Here is a quick tabulation of facts from that study.
- Only 2.9% engineers in India can speak fluently.
- If spoken English is considered, 51% are not employable
- With written English and speaking, power 97.1% cannot make the cut.
- Only 6.7% can understand and respond to question spontaneously
- An engineer can earn 30-50% more salary with better English communication.
Aspiring Minds 2016 engineer’s employability report shows negligible improvements over the 2016 facts.
Why is English proficiency tied to higher salaries?
- High paying jobs like Technical Business consultancy, corporate sales, senior management positions require more talking/writing than coding.
- A programmer with good English communication does better in of-shore locations. It is easier to communicate with the clients in English speaking countries that typically pay higher.
- A Coder making silly English mistakes in the front-end or backend code is seen as a liability.
- Sometimes a writer may not be available to document a project or technology or it may be technically too advanced for a non-technical writer to document a technology process. In that case, a programmer or tech professional with good English communication can make come in handy. Appraisal in such cases is imminent.
According to Ms. Aparajita Singh of Engmates, a leading English Language and Spoken English Institute in Delhi: It is shocking to see the level of English in students of UP and Haryana boards. We often go down to basic as low as nouns and verbs. Spelling levels and pronunciation are pathetic in about 65% cases.
Similarly, we talked to Rooturaj Pattanaik, Consultant at an established IT company in New Delhi. “Programmers often give excuses that only languages they need to master are Java, PHP, Ruby or similar languages. However, that is far from reality. It bears down negatively on your career when you present the software demo and the login screen reads – Plz enter your Surname.”
At MME recruitment consultants we make sure the engineers we recruit have decent English speaking and writing skills. Our engineering recruitment wing has been supplying IT engineers, Civil engineers, Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Marine Engineers and from many other disciplines in various ethnic placements like South Africa, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Singapore etc.