Employability skills in management students-an industry perspective

Employability skills are those basic skills necessary for getting, keeping, and doing well on a job. These are the skills, attitudes and actions that enable workers to get along with their fellow workers and supervisors and to make sound, critical decisions. Unlike occupational or technical skills, employability skills are generic in nature rather than job specific and cut across all industry types, business sizes, and job levels from the entry-level worker to the senior-most position.

Management education today has to address a wide variety of critical issues, one of survival, intense competition, serving the needs of stakeholders, delivering industry employable graduates and in the process of doing all this develop brand equity. While all of these issues are critical and important enough to generate a discussion, research and elaboration at length, this paper will address the issue of employability skills needed by management students from an industry perspective which has been drawn from a survey of 48 corporate interviews, representing HR managers, marketing managers who are involved in recruitment process and later appraisal of the selected candidates also. \the paper has drawn from their experiences and highlights the skill sets needed by management students in the current market scenario which shall be in the author's view even applicable in the next decade to come. 10 major skill areas have been identified and in them the important ones that need to be addressed are effective communication both oral and written, problem identification and problem solving, time management, numerical competency, data analysis, flexibility and adaptability.