Just because you have a college degree in some stream or another, it doesn’t guarantee you a job. In today’s competitive job market, employers are going to look for something else. Whether you like it or not, at the job interview, it’s your fellow job seeker and competitor, who is perceived to have, for instance, better communication skills than you, is more likely to walk away with the job.

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You may have got good marks in your graduation, but not acquired what employers call, “soft skills”. These are essentially what is referred to as “people skills”, which are the intangible skills such as the ability to communicate well or be innovative.

But then, as you know, not many colleges list “soft skills” in their syllabus as a possible subject of study. It is assumed that you are either born with it or you have to go and get it from somewhere else. It has never really been your college’s headache to ensure that when you’re out there in the big bad world of employment, you can process and package the knowledge gained from your college education in ways that might help you land and hold a job.

But that is about to change. St Xavier’s College, Calcutta, is planning to introduce courses that would train students in acquiring soft skills and this may be as early as July this year. “The idea is to impart the kind of education that will make our students employable,” explains Father Mathew, principal of St Xavier’s College. He points out that the courses will especially target students from the minority communities from underprivileged backgrounds, including handicapped students and those who have got admission under various quotas because of their marginalised status in society.

And the area of focus of these courses will be acquiring skills that would help students get jobs primarily in such areas as information technology and IT-enabled services, because of “the vast employment opportunity that exists in these fields”, explains Father Mathew. For instance, one of the proposed courses that intends to impart “basic professional skills” will not only include such computer application and software training as Microsoft Office 2007, Tally and Access, but also teach “organisational skills” and “research skills”, along with courses in “personality development” and “communication in English”.

The soft-skills courses are going to add to the other, already existing career-oriented programmes, which the college had started in July 2006. The six courses in this category, which are on offer at the moment are — advertising; computerised accounting; foreign trade practices and management; logistic and supply chain management; tax practice and procedure and real estate management. The last was started in 2007 in collaboration with CREDAI Bengal, the well-known, Bengal-based confederation of real estate developers.

According to Professor Ashis Mitra, who is in charge of the career-oriented programmes, “These courses were introduced in order to provide students with the opportunity to gain practical skills that would help them in their individual professions.”

The six existing career-oriented courses are, however, not open only to students of St Xavier’s College, but also to outsiders. Says Mitra, “There are quite a few professionals who take up these courses as a means of value addition.”

With the exception of the courses in real estate management and logistic and supply chain management — for which the application criterion is a graduation degree or proof of appearance in the final graduation degree examination — the other courses are also open to undergraduate students. There are no other prerequisites though, says Mitra, it helps if you have an academic background or a natural orientation in the area of your interest. However, for those who do not have that, additional tutorial material is provided to bring the student up to the standard that is being followed in the classroom. The courses — the completion of which will give you a diploma — are taught mostly by professionals from the different fields, though faculty members also include the college’s own teachers. The duration of the courses is from six months to a year and classes are held from three to five days a week for two hours (from 6 to 8 in the evening).

The number of seats at the moment is 25 per class. If you are interested, application procedures for the next batch — which is in July — will begin end of this month or beginning of next. You can get the application forms from St Xavier’s College on Park Street or download it from the Internet (sxccal.edu). The fees vary, depending on the course that you are taking. They range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 18,000. The real estate management programme, for instance, costs Rs 15,000 and the logistic and supply chain management is Rs 18,000 for one year, payable in three instalments.

Details of the soft-skills courses — including cost and duration — are in the process of being worked out, but according to A.C. Gomes, vice-principal, arts and science, St Xavier’s College, “initially it will be introduced to the BA and BSc students who are enrolled in the general category since unlike students in the honours categories, most of them are from marginalised backgrounds”. Gomes explains that the general streams students and those who have gained admission under the reserved or handicapped categories do not usually have enough marks to make them employable and are therefore more in need of career-oriented training. He adds, “Many of the students are from the lowest echelons of the social and economic strata and do not always have the level of awareness when competing with those from more privileged backgrounds. In order to bring them up to the mark, it is necessary to equip them with additional skills that would help them compete in the job market.”

Gomes points out that the whole endeavour to introduce career-oriented courses, especially to the more marginalised students of the college, is “part of the vision of this college, which is ingrained in every Xavarian, and that is to provide an option for the poor”.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)