Is it just commerce or e-commerce?

An Economic Times article, emphasis that IIM graduates rush to join e-commerce companies today. The Indian e-commerce to be worth $20 billion by 2015, recording a 70% growth compared to the previous year.

Anything online years back could only be quoted madness or blasphemy. But the reverse looks to be happening these days.

In the digitally transforming world, nobody wants to pursue an ordinary commerce course rather develop skills that complement the ever evolving world. The hyper speed growth of the online portals today has shifted the mindset of a student, at least for the way they view education and knowledge. The spiraling high rate of online sales has forced the audiences to grab some knowledge of this medium and study it as a part of their conventional course to increased applicability, grow India’s e-commerce market at breakneck speed. This makes India one of the fastest-growing ecommerce markets in Asia-Pacific region.

The B.com degree, until about a decade ago, enjoyed the exclusivity of being the only degree that could be a student’s stepping stone to the world of commerce and business. However, now it’s been replaced by specialized courses which have their defined focus areas for concentrated experience and skill building.

While the commercial world is expanding, it is prudent for colleges to conduct courses that can train students in specific areas instead of conventional and clichéd subjects with zero relevance.

As time passes, India is bound to become one of the largest players in the e-commerce market, even stronger than its present status.

The courses must be put together in a way to facilitate it with job skills, keeping them out of the just “generic” courses matching the human and industry demands.

The evolution from commerce to e-commerce has been gradual yet disruptive. It’s changed the education system on the whole with better pay appetite, new hiring and better profiles offered.

The generic nature of regular B.com made it popular in the first place but the degree now risks being labeled as obsolete due to the availability of specialized courses offered by various colleges and universities.

The introduction of new niche specializations has changed the market scenario for students and aspiring professionals.

A course with its must focus on giving industry exposure should be the norm today. Universities need to have a strong interface with industry to understand and design the curriculum, impart employment-oriented soft skills and ensure proactive placement coordination. The courses must lend ease to the college’s burden of having to modify their syllabus to tackle the industry-academia skills gap.

The top B-schools can do a lot to increase the employability of their graduates than just offer ornamental degrees away.

Why skills win over knowledge?

Are universities and colleges teaching skills needed in technology based economy?

Maybe yes, they teach critical thinking, problem solving, research skills, and encourage original thinking, just the skills needed in today’s work force. But have we ever evaluated if that’s suffice to meet the ever-growing need of skilled professionals in the country?

Our job today is the pure exploration of new knowledge and ideas and pass on the acquired knowledge to the new generation. If any of it rubs off in the commercial world, we are good.

The introduction of specialized courses has sparked a debate as to whether it is more important to make students job-ready or give them a strong academic foundation. Skills have a powerful role play in our professional lives which fills the gap even for knowledge sometimes. Skills win over knowledge to catch up with the professional transitions:

• Skills puts a priority list in place:

The purpose of the skills-led approach is to prioritize and develop transferable skills like knowledge sharing, collaboration and empathy. The content studied is not as important as transferring their skills to any content or text, whether books, articles or multi-modal media.

• Skills people posses enhances their sense of self-worth, security and belonging:
• For many people, the acts of learning and mastering new skills are important in themselves. Possession of skills can be integral to a person’s sense of belonging and self-worth: many people define themselves by what they can “do”, not only in employment but elsewhere in life.

• Skills relate directly to employment decisions & career choices:

Those with relatively few educational qualifications & more learned skills are likely to be better employed and, on average, have good incomes when in work. This affects people’s economic standard of living as well as their security and ability to make choices about their lives. Skills are important for gaining access to services and for understanding and exercising civil and political rights.

• Employers are often looking for skills that go beyond qualifications and experience:

While your education and experience may make you eligible to apply for a job, to be successful in the role you will need to exhibit a mix of skills: ‘employability skills’.  This means that the specialist, technical skills associated with different roles may be less important than the ‘soft skills’ that can be transferred between different jobs and different employment sectors.

For employers, getting the right people means identifying people with the right skills and qualities to fulfill the role and contribute to the organization’s success.  Candidates may have the qualifications and ‘hard skills’ needed to be able to manage the job role but, without a well-honed set of ‘soft skills’, employers are less inclined to hire.

For leaders who are prepared to fill their digital skills gaps and ease the pressure on their companies by ensuring all professionals have a working knowledge of digital, this will be a period of opportunity and growth.

Why choose Social Media Sciences over the extravagant courses offered today?

Postgraduate study is not necessarily built on the skills acquired at undergraduate degree level but on competencies, interest areas and existing market opportunities. The pursuit of any form of study to enhance future career prospects is a gamble, but by engaging with the available opportunities, it can also be a worthy investment. As the possibility of unemployment looms for many, more than 500,000 each year choose to pursue further study in the form of a postgraduate program such as a master’s. The motivation behind this decision is often related to belief that a higher-level qualification will result in a better job. But does the CV addition of a CA, CS or MBA or any related or unrelated professional course actually improve employment prospects?

As per a news article in Deccan Herald published on the 25th Dec’14, The State government will soon conduct a survey to ascertain the reasons for the dwindling number of applicants for MBA courses in the recent years. A strange situation, however, prevails throughout the country with a number of MBA colleges being shut in the last five years, according to All India Council for Technical Education. Getting a job you want is about more than just a qualification nowadays. Continuing education is clearly important, but the value of a master’s degree depends on what you do with it. Often, though, postgraduate study can be about changing direction rather than specializing, and social media sciences can enhance career options. A master’s program can also be a significant way of networking to secure later employment opportunities. But the question is that all we want? Dedicating a year to a subject is advantageous, but it takes more than that alone to improve employability. Use this opportunity to deepen your understanding of the space, market and opportunities in the social media avenues to transfer into a complete professional. Just another course is not a guarantee for a successful career; it’s only an evidence to have reached another level of education. It’s undoubtedly considered be hale just a most sought-after graduate degree but the same expensive generalized program can make it difficult to stand out in a huge crowd of pass outs. A degree is not valuable without relevant job skills; it must enhance chances for better job opportunities.MBA is quite general in nature as far as the course curriculum is concerned. Hence, if you are willing to delve into a specific area, MBA isn’t a good option. Any knowledge seeker must never stop learning as we know it’s a growing process. These courses have a humongous cost to be paid; therefore its inability to get a good job is as good as deterrence.

Social media jobs are growing with time & can provide an edge in career pursuits. It’s evolved into an often-essential practice for companies across industries. It’s become quite critical to embrace the power of social media networks and build a digitally enlightened society. There’s a spiraling rise in social media jobs more so because they form an essential part of any company but there’s an ever growing dearth of people who are professionally trained in the relevant skill sets and deliver results as per the changing scenario. The growth of social media will fuel the creation of new jobs across various employment categories. Working in social media can be an exciting and challenging career for anyone and everyone, ambitious of a potentially growth oriented career shift. However, it’s essential to acquire the skills and knowledge that employers are seeking. By developing the social media expertise, top companies are looking for professionals that can boost their credentials and provide an edge the working members to advance in their current positions or switch to a new career path. mid-career professionals seeking to re-enter the workforce may find it advantageous to gain these increasingly sought-after social media skills.

Social media seems to be the current buzz term that dominates job and career strategies. Slowing economic growth seems to have taken its toll on another profession—chartered accountancy. Fewer companies are recruiting chartered accountants, or CA, whose job spans auditing and accounting, tax advice and financial planning and has traditionally been a rewarding career. The job scenario for fresh CA’s, CS’s and MBA’s has been clouded by the economic slowdown. There is a direct correlation of placements with the country’s economy. On the contrary many social Media opportunities abound to increase competitive advantage, converting into skilled market leader and also generating numerous employment opportunities in this digital era of working professionals.

a humongous cost to be paid; therefore its inability to get a good job is as good as deterrence.

Why digital skills are a must for the next job you seek regardless of your profession?

Can you understand and drive digital strategies? If not it’s time to learn how, because in our increasingly digital lives almost every job now has a digital element to it. That’s why digital skills have become a necessity for anyone looking for their next job. We all live in a digital world and whether we like it or not, most of us now work in digital jobs. The digital revolution has touched the lives of virtually every consumer and business around the globe. As a result digital strategy – and along with it digital literacy – is growing in importance.From CEOs assessing the threat of cyber crime to marketers looking for the latest trending platforms, digital skills are now needed at all levels in most job functions.For example, rather than customer service representatives in call centers, today we see more live chat attendants who will interact with customers online and on social media. And rather than traditional sales forecasts, today people are using big data to make more precise predictions.Even today’s senior manager needs digital expertise to be able to locate knowledge, assess how valid it is, and then work with others to determine what to do with it. For job seekers to take advantage of this new jobs growth, it is important to continuously update your digital skills. Regardless of the profession or industry you work in, organizations want to recruit, retain and develop digital skills across their entire business.In recognition of this new digital age, education systems need to adapt. All jobs now have a digital element. Given the fast pace of technological advancement, employers look for candidates who are open to change and can adapt to a constantly evolving digital environment – whether that’s in their marketing, accountancy or logistics department. Digital changes are impacting all aspects of business and candidates today need to show they are digitally proficient, up-to-date with the latest technological advances related to their job function and industry, and possess the ability to lean into the changes of a digital world.

     

In the war for digital talent, the statistic stands out with an alarming 90% of companies lacking digital skills. That statistic alone should spur even the most apathetic of organizations into action. However, many are not heeding the warning signs. This is a surprising and worrying trend, particularly given that skills are so key to success in the new digital economy. Innovation is also a concern. Many organizations continue to lean on traditional methods to build skills, such as recruitment drives and training. This conservatism is surprising given the success stories that exist. Wal-Mart and Nike are some of the examples. Innovation does not need to stop with acquisition and incubation. The initiative was to scale up Internet marketing initiatives, and enable cross-pollination of skills. Even the skill-sets and DNA of today’s talent are changing. Today, and increasingly so in the future, technical talent will need to speak the language of the business while business professionals must have a complete understanding of IT, way beyond a vague grasp of the right acronyms. The quest for such “hybrid professionals” is already underway. Building these new talent pools requires a new approach. It’s a different battle-ground and a fierce one, not least because of the chronic shortage of digital talent.

Relevance of skills as a part of higher education for greater employability

 

It’s ironically a psychological shift of mindset from literacy to real education. The attention of education policy-makers, educationists and the international education community is moving away from raising literacy levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education, towards skills building required by the workforce to promote economic growth.

Education is considered as a shield against unemployment but to what extent does it protect us from the said contingency?

Education can hold a key role not only in finding a job, but also landing one that offers both financial and intrinsic rewards. Your level of education can affect both the breadth and depth of jobs available to you. You typically can apply for a broader range of jobs with more education, and the jobs you can get usually yield greater pay and chances for upward mobility but until which point we should rely on “just” education is the main concern. Recognition of the issue is also growing in emerging economies and middle-income countries.

Higher education experts say that universities are coming under increasing pressure to ensure that their graduates are ‘employable’, although preparation for ‘employability’ is still only rarely incorporated in university courses, and the skills that could make a difference in finding employment and ways to deliver those skills are still not evident.

There is growing awareness of the need to link education to employment. There may be a problem on the supply side – that you’ve got all this unemployment because people don’t have the right skills.

In richer countries, demographics change as more workers retire, and economic restructuring as workers become displaced by technology and globalization.

It’s a must now to improve skills. It is not just about a better match of skills and jobs but what kind of economic environment is needed to achieve a more high-skilled equilibrium.

Higher education systems and institutions are under pressure to reform to provide adequate skills and knowledge for the evolving labor markets. It’s a compulsion now to improve upon the quality of higher education to make employability an outcome to the university courses.

Higher education must diversify in the direction of skill building with a right mix of vocational skills that serve the labor market and higher-end research graduates that can fuel innovation for economic growth.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company dissects the reasons behind what it calls the “twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills” designed last year. The courses must be devised to make graduates more in demand, indulge in effective education and contribute to the supply market directly which can be an integrated, consolidated program.

UNESCO’s release in May on Education and Skills for Inclusive and Sustainable Development beyond 2015 notes that, “the most recent developments in the knowledge society and the subsequent changes in the world of work at the global level are raising skill/qualifications requirements for job entry and subsequently demand for a more knowledgeable and skilled workforce”.

Without the right skills, people languish on the benchmarks of society, technological progress doesn’t translate into economic growth, and countries can’t compete in today’s economies.

McKinsey report found that 53% of Indian employers were unable to fill entry-level vacancies mainly because new graduates lacked the right skills.

All premier institutions and universities must try and incorporate in courses and programs that build competencies for the graduates and make them more employable in the market. The shift in the structural change must bring out the following changes:

1. Employment Basics
2. Recession Proofing
3. Technical Careers
4. Job Flexibility
5. Skill Development
6. College Resources

To unlock the full potential of education as a driver for growth and jobs, our country must pursue reforms to boost both the performance and efficiency of the education system. The focus must be on the skills that make a different to the society and economy on the whole.

-Smita Dutta

iMET Global

Social Media over CS/CA

Slowing economic growth seems to have taken its toll on another two prominent professions—chartered accountancy & company secretariat-ship. Fewer companies are recruiting chartered accountants & company secretaries’ whose job spans auditing ,company regulations, compliances and accounting, tax advice and financial planning and has traditionally been a rewarding career.

The job scenario for fresh chartered accountants has been clouded by the economic slowdown, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) said. Economic growth slowed to a decade’s low of 5% in the year ended 31 March in year 2014s. Growth in the quarter ended June was the slowest in four years. In 2012, at least 130 companies recruited CAs from across cities but this year only 113 corporate houses are participating in the hiring process in the current round of placements. There is a direct correlation of placements with the country’s economy,” said Subodh Kumar Agrawal, president of ICAI, the apex regulator of CAs .

The hiring trend in the current placements season has softened since February-March. A silver lining is that the information technology (IT) and social media sectors have started hiring more CAs & CSs during this placement season because their business prospects have improved. More fresh CAs have enrolled in the current placements.

While 3,600 candidates enrolled for job placements in February-March season, 4,800 fresh CAs have joined the fray in the current round that ends in the middle of September. Of these, only 112 have got job offers in the last one month.

Many social Media opportunities abound to increase competitive advantage, converting the aspirants for professional courses into skilled market leader.

Are you desirous to become a people’s person? Our professional identities and job searches are generally aimless without looking from a farfetched perspective.

The goal on a confused students mind must be to interact online to strongly influence theirs career tomorrow. So why not make a career that’s parching ahead in time. These courses do not offer a multipurpose career option.

The CA aspirants slog it out 10-12 years to clear papers and to do well with the degree with the discernible investment made. CAs restricts themselves to auditing and taxation I.e. their field of knowledge only but forgets to acquire skills that cater to the ever changing technology landscape. They are wizards only in accounting. It does not provide a better edge.

Tell me how many accountants today can survive without a computer? Practically none. The decision isn’t easy to make a choice but important.

Factors like improved technology, constantly changing laws & the entry of foreign players in the Indian market necessitate social media skills. The future of Social Media Sciences is promising & dynamic. . CA’s do not desire to be challenged by an ever-changing business environment. Thrive on the challenges and seek these situations as opportunities for further growth in experience and knowledge.

Most of these clichéd courses are ‘clerical’ in nature. The emerging skills set & social personality are needed for today’s times. The corporate upheavals have shaken the job scene. New challenge can only be shouldered by some highly qualified and competent professionals. The demand for company secretaries has become microscopic. The growth of our country’s financial might is a problem that demands for trained professionals. There is a spurt in the corporate activities, all this means demand for highly knowledgeable and technologically equipped individuals.
Since the roles and responsibilities associated with the professional positions are highly accountable and visible, there isn’t enough knowledge or skills provided to match the levels in the prevailing industry.

 There is vast demand-supply gap in the availability of qualified CAs & CSs but the sad news is there aren’t many fully prepared ones who could identify the need for professionalism and act a leader.

CAs with social media knowledge can be the evolved version that’s the call of the revolutionized economy.

 

 

 

Is The Conventional Educational System Rotting Careers ?

An educational meet by Ex Prime Minister back in 2013 discussing Higher Education scene in India made it quite clear Indian educational culture is puzzling. The foreign delegates in the education sector raised the same age-old problem with Indian education system: “Why does the Indian education system remain at a standstill, while business is moving and the skills-gap is widening?”

Also, a grave concern about the status of the education system in the country is full of ambiguity and falling out of the employability context giving away expensive paper degrees and outdated teaching methods which are only good for turning intelligent people into zombies.

The rot goes deeper, because of structural reasons. The first is that the current system of education — allegedly ‘modern’ — is inherently perverse: It was imposed upon India by the British imperialists, with the single-minded purpose of creating coolies and clerks to help them run the country without make them qualified in the right direction. With the quality of education in the colleges, there is simply no room for creativity or high-quality research.

 With the outbreak of technological change, the Indian education system has been still largely following traditional approaches whereas the modern Indian demands a dramatic change in the way education is perceived in India. Comments and concerns by Germans investors last year at a meet should make us realize that we are sitting on a skills time bomb that will explode if we do not take up job-related vocational training. 

 Day by day it is becoming very difficult to find graduates with the right skill set for business within the changing technological framework.

 Indian government’s attempt at introducing vocational training and allocating huge budgets focusing at this has been made. The question remains are the colleges imparting vocational training for higher employability opportunities?

We need to bridge the gap between education and work as simple as that. We need to ensure that the education goes beyond the classroom. Education should be about empowering people to gain employable skills and this can be done through vocational courses. The courses that have  its focal point around training that delivers value in terms of good jobs and making students more capable to be taken in by big companies.

The colleges in the modern times should not mould students without a dissertation, blackballed and unemployable. A focus on skill training as against university degrees would help. Undoubtedly the literacy level has increased but there’s no real human value addition which is why the Indian Education system demands a reform.

The methodology of the colleges today is repetitive, unproductive and builds a breed of ill equipped people who can’t be good enough to be employed beyond their degrees. We need to revive our education system completely and move from the culture of degrees to learning.

It’s time to follow this directive “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. The key element here should be that education system must foster “out of the box thinking” which is hugely lacking in our country. We focus on creating a league of mindless followers. In India, the best crammers for tests are rewarded. The ever left need is to learn skills, and more importantly learn how to apply them. Creativity, original thinking, research, and innovation must all be cultivated and encouraged from a young age. This is the primary reason why Indian students escape India and prefer learning abroad. If India was able to replicate the educational system abroad and was able to either prevent its students from leaving, or was able to attract students from other countries, $17 billion would be saved annually.

The universities here have been long following the rules of the imperialists. Our universities continue tunneling students into constricted streams, taught by few quality institutions, sought by many anxious thousands.

Suffocating education suffocates growth, lazy teaching and rote-based themes cutting off the birth of new ideas, new possibilities.

Creating a few more schools or allowing hundreds of colleges and private universities to mushroom is not going to solve the crisis of education in India. And a crisis it is – we are in a country where people are spending their parent’s life savings and borrowed money on education – and even then not getting standard education, and struggling to find employment of their choice. In this country, millions of students are victim of an unrealistic, pointless, mindless rat race. The mind numbing competition and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and originality of millions of Indian students every year; it also drives brilliant students to commit suicide.

 

Effective Education

Effective education is nothing short of a revolution as it brings revolutionary changes in life. It changes the destiny of individuals and that of nations. In 18th century when Industrial Revolution hit the world, it gave the world a huge array of big and small machines that revolutionized the manufacturing process. In order to match the skill-sets to manage the Industrial Revolution, education system underwent a complete overhaul resulting in a large set of highly successful people across the western world. It even made America the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

 

In 20th century when IT revolution hit the world, it gave the world an array of impressive conglomerates’ that wielded the superlative economic power to even dictate terms with the strongest economies in the world. In order to match the skill-sets to manage the IT revolution, soon education system again underwent compelling changes resulting in large set of highly successful people across the world. It actually produced UMMP – Upwardly Mobile Middleclass Professionals – throughout the world who displayed enviously contagious financial muscles and high standard of living.

                            

There is a general perception that it is only the quality of education that makes students employable. This is not fully true. History bears the testimony that whenever the students were equipped with skill-sets required by the evolving world, mass-scale transformation of people has happened. Today millions of educated youth in our country are unemployable and the primary reason for this is that our education system is unable to see the “emerging skill-sets” that are needed by the evolving world while what most of our students get are the “paper degrees” minus the skill-sets. It is time that Indian education system that is trapped inside the conventional degrees that offer very little or no employment opportunities move to provide skill-sets actually required by the emerging world and one such area that is beginning to create nothing short of a revolution is “Social Media” in the digital world where millions of job opportunities are waiting for the trained Social Media Enabled professionals like the Industrial and IT revolutions when they happened in the past. 

 

 C. Devidasan

 Chief Learning Officer

 iMET Global

 

Importance of Children’s Day & Education

The values and disciplines learned as a child are responsible for the kind of adulthood one has. Thus, childhood is special and should be celebrated. The memories as a child must be savored well.

Children’s Day is to remind all young and adults about children’s right to enjoy their childhood without any boundaries and to be an educated adult in the future. Children’s Day is to revise the right methods of raising children. Children’s day also known as” Bal divas” in India is celebrated every year on the 14th of November to increase  awareness of people towards the rights, care and education of children.14^th November is also the birth date of our first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

Every child has a right to good education, but millions of children miss out on it. We are here talking about the education that acknowledges ones right & the relevance of its respect. Education gives you the mind to make choices & stand by them too. The mindfulness to the right to education, which is a right defined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child can’t be repudiated.

Most often we think of schools when we think about education, but learning happens in other ways too:

• Non-formal education involves learning via organized activities outside of school. For example, teens learn organizational and leadership skills by volunteering in their community or being part of a youth organization.
• Informal education happens while talking to friends or parents. For example, one can learn important life skills such as how to prevent HIV by discussing it with friends.

Today the finest medium to impart knowledge without a formal structure can be imparted by Social media solutions. Just familiarizing with the digital world is the one stop shop for all education related problems.

The most relevant part of how social media can contribute to education in the best way is by keeping up with the world.

We live in an ever-changing world. New technologies keep coming up and if you don’t want to be left behind, you must keep up with the world which is moving really fast. Without education it will be really difficult for you to adapt to all these changes. An educated person is much more aware of the latest technologies and all the changes that are taking place in the world. For example, an uneducated person may not know about the benefits of the internet whereas an educated person uses this gift of technology regularly for work as well as for entertainment.

Faculties in various schools and colleges are increasingly interested to use social media tools to facilitate learning and encourage learning.

Education is vital for the economic prosperity of a nation and can better be accessible through social media conveniently.