Tag Archives: jobs

QMUL’s MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Conversion Programme)

Why QMUL’s MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Conversion Programme) is important to non-STEM graduates.

Many non-STEM graduates feel the need to change their careers to make themselves more job-ready and present themselves as better candidates to prospective employers.

As computers and technology have become vital components of almost all job and industry functions, it makes sense for graduates to invest in technology-related post-grad qualifications to upgrade their knowledge and skills, increase their opportunities in the job market, and embark on future-ready careers.

Earlier this was not easy to accomplish. But today, UK universities are offering post-grad conversion courses to non-STEM graduates in order to build them for the future and improve their immediate chances for employment in technology-related fields. The QMUL MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Conversion Programme) is one such course to set you on the right technology path. Check it out on the link provided here.

UN’s 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Today, 11 February is UN’s 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The 2021 Theme is ‘Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19’. Over the past 15 years, the global community has made a lot of effort in inspiring and engaging women and girls in science. Yet women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science.

However, there is a positive turn of events in higher education globally as universities are welcoming more and more female students – many of them in STEM courses, building them for careers in science, engineering, technology, mathematics, medicine, research, etc.

The industry is also working to change perspectives. For instance, job advertisements are being redesigned to mitigate gender bias in order to welcome women into STEM job roles.

EngineeringUK chief executive Dr Hilary Leevers writes in The Engineer blog that “Despite four in five (80%) women admitting they wouldn’t consider working in engineering, more than half (56%) were interested in the engineering job role once it had been reimagined.”

The education-skills disconnect

There’s a skills shortage. Not just in India, but the world over. Corporate organisations, large and small businesses, startup firms, governments, NGOs, healthcare and utility services, industries far and wide, and even education and training institutions which have the onus of producing skilled manpower for the industry and the world’s economy, are all complaining that there aren’t enough skilled people, nor enough people with the right skills, to meet the demand in the marketplace. In short, there’s a disconnect between the supply of skilled manpower from the education institutions and what’s in demand by the industry.

In Asia, where the demand for skilled people is far higher in sheer numbers than anywhere else in the world, governments in specific countries are investing heavily in education and training. India is a case in point, where the college-going population and, in turn, the working-age population (estimated to be growing at 12 million every year) thereafter are growing in leaps and bounds. To manage the growing college-going population, the Indian government plans to introduce another 800 universities and 35,000 colleges by 2020, mainly through public-private partnerships (PPPs).

Despite this focus and growth in higher education in India, employers, be they public or private organisations or the government, complain that the large majority of university graduates who enter the working population are unfit for the jobs in the marketplace. Not only do these graduates not possess the ‘technical’ skills required for the jobs, they lack soft skills as well. They even lack skills and attitudes necessary to adapt to new technologies at work and the discipline to fit into the work culture. These drawbacks mean further investments by the employers to prepare the newly-hired employees into the workforce.

For one thing, the university education curriculum is slow to change with the times. Thus, falling behind in providing state-of-the art education and training needed in jobs in the marketplace. Most of the education is theoretical, with very little focus on practical teaching which is expected to provide actual skills. Moreover, many universities, colleges and training institutes – particularly the new privately-owned ones – lack qualified and experienced faculty members to impart the education and training needed by the industry. There seems to be a skills shortage here too.

Where Do Designers Go To Work After College?

If you’re thinking of taking up a career in design, this post might interest you.

The title of this short post and the infographic accompanying it are both taken from a post/infographic in Fast Co. Design from a year ago. The author of the post is John Brownlee. He makes an interesting point in the post and raises a few introspective questions:

“The implication is that the degree is essentially worthless, and that it will never lead to a job where your education would be relevant. But what about design majors? Is a Bachelor of Design degree a “French Fry” education, or does it actually lead to a job in a relevant design field?”

Have things changed in the past year in the United States, in India and across the world? It’s open to interpretations, of course. But, without much ado, please do take a look at John Brownlee’s post at Fast Co. Design and form your own conclusions.

[Visualization from the United States Census Bureau; Image: Student designers via Dikiiy / Shutterstock]

Boomerang kids

In an earlier post titled The debt to higher education, we had blogged about the financial burden of higher education on the students. Put simply, the burden is the heavy cost of college education today, and the huge debts in education loans which students (and their parents) need to pay off as they complete their college education and settle down to their chosen careers. If the amount of debt wasn’t trouble enough, the global economic downturn has added to their woes as they struggle to find suitable jobs with incomes large enough to pay for their loans and meet their living expenses.

Of course, many students do settle down happily into their careers; but many more are left to fend for themselves – taking up jobs on lower pay, or part-time assignments, or even worse, suffer the shame of unemployment. That proud dream of leaving home for college in a foreign country, finding a job after completing the degree programme, and living on one’s own terms fades away under difficult economic situations around the world. In the recent past, much to the embarrassment and frustration of many students in the Western world, they are returning home to live with their parents as they pick up temporary work to pay off their education loans. This is true for many Indian students as well.

Image courtesy www.ltaaa.com

Image courtesy http://www.ltaaa.com

The United States has coined a term for these students who have returned home from college to live with their parents while they look for options and incomes to pay off their education loans. The term is ‘boomerang kids’ and the New York Times had published an interesting article on them. In the article, titled It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave, Adam Davidson writes,

“One in five people in their 20s and early 30s is currently living with his or her parents. And 60 percent of all young adults receive financial support from them. That’s a significant increase from a generation ago, when only one in 10 young adults moved back home and few received financial support. The common explanation for the shift is that people born in the late 1980s and early 1990s came of age amid several unfortunate and overlapping economic trends. Those who graduated college as the housing market and financial system were imploding faced the highest debt burden of any graduating class in history. Nearly 45 percent of 25-year-olds, for instance, have outstanding loans, with an average debt above $20,000… And more than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree.”

What’s worse, Adam Davidson reports,

“Some may hope that the boomerang generation represents an unfortunate but temporary blip — that the class of 2015 will be able to land great jobs out of college, and that they’ll reach financial independence soon after reaching the drinking age. But the latest recession was only part of the boomerang generation’s problem. In reality, it simply amplified a trend that had been growing stealthily for more than 30 years.”

And that,

“These boomerang kids are not a temporary phenomenon. They appear to be part of a new and permanent life stage. More than that, they represent a much larger anxiety-provoking but also potentially thrilling economic evolution that is affecting all of us. It’s so new, in fact, that most boomerang kids and their parents are still struggling to make sense of it. Is living with your parents a sign, as it once was, of failure? Or is it a practical, long-term financial move?”

These are searching questions and possibly hold true for students in India too – though Indian parents and families welcome their children back from a foreign education with more compassion. Unless there’s a quick global economic upswing with significant volumes of job creation, this ‘boomerang kids’ phenomenon can turn into a worrying concern for us all.

[Citation: It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave by Adam Davidson, The New York Times.]

All college education is not equal

There’s nothing like college education to broaden our minds, prepare us for employment and launch us into our careers. A good college education – meaning an education from a reputed college or university where we’ve performed well – additionally ensures that we get a job of our choice the moment, or even before, we leave college and step into the big wide world.

This idea seems failsafe when the economy is doing well and there’s a big demand for graduates and post-graduates to fill all those white-collar jobs in the industry. And, no matter what our field of study is – whether engineering or economics, mathematics or music – we are confident of finding jobs to suit our interests. But, what if the economy is not doing well? Does it have any effect on our college education and the careers we choose?

This is the subject of an interesting article published in The New York Times last year when the US economy was seriously struggling. At the end of the article, titled A College Major Matters Even More in a Recession, Claire Cain Miller concludes, “But not all college degrees are created equal, and some provide graduates with more shelter from economic storms than others. That is yet another variable for students to keep in mind as they weigh which career to pursue.”

Earlier in the article (which is based on a study done by Yale economists Lisa Kahn, Joseph Altonji and Jamin Speer), Ms Miller explains, “But recessions don’t treat all college graduates equally. Those who major in subjects that command higher salaries, like engineering and finance, increase their earnings advantage when they graduate into a recession. And those who major in subjects that lead to lower-paying jobs, like philosophy and music, are even more disadvantaged than in normal economic times.”

Although this is a comment on, and a reflection of, the US economy last year, for students eager to enter college, this can be worrying. Lest we lose hope on a college education, we are comforted with, “That is not to say a college degree has lost its value. The opposite is true.” A college major matters even more in a recession than it does otherwise.

[Citation: A College Major Matters Even More in a Recession by Claire Cain Miller, The Upshot, The New York Times.]

Career counselling adds value to students – Part 2

[You can read Part 1 of this post here.]

Even if a small portion of fresh graduates and post-graduates are able to find employment in reputed organisations, these once-coveted jobs no longer offer guarantee in terms of security that the employees seek. In terms of employment, what matters today are not only degrees that employees carry with them to their jobs, but also a mindset for continuous learning, innovation and self-improvement throughout their lives.

Considering India’s growing student population, this is a huge opportunity for career counsellors. Career counselling no longer needs to be in a rut with a handful of options for students, using the same-old counselling scripts and methodology. Rather, career counselling opens up many more careers, jobs, courses, programmes, qualifications, colleges, universities, skills and experiences that employers and the industry seek. Thereby helping students make informed decisions about their careers.

To counsel students well, counsellors themselves need to stay abreast with and ahead of changes and innovations in higher education, careers, industry diversification, employment opportunities, entrepreneurship, student aspirations and mindsets, and counselling techniques. If career counsellors do this well, they can add much-needed value to this universe of higher education, jobs and careers – and create an important niche for themselves and their profession.

The good news is, career counselling in India is coming of age. It is being recognised as an important aspect of career building for students. Since colleges and universities in India are still not geared to offer career counselling to their students, career counsellors are setting up their own private consulting ventures. This is an urban phenomenon at the moment and yet to become popular with students and their parents. Even school and college teachers aren’t informed enough to recommend names of career counsellors to their students when their students turn to them for advice.

As a response to this lack of information exchange between schools and colleges, students and their parents, career counsellors have begun marketing themselves to schools and colleges.

Career counselling adds value to students – Part 1

For most students seeking admission to college or university, the goal really is securing a job and starting a career. This usually means finding a job that provides security against unemployment, pays well, and offers opportunities for growth over the years spent in building their careers. The college/university education is really a means to that end.

That’s where career counselling comes in – to guide students towards appropriate careers. Mind you, this applies to a minority of students in India as most Indian students do not have access to career counselling. Here’s how the process normally works for students who have the orientation and motivation to meet counsellors:

  1. Students look for careers that match their interests, aptitudes, talents and high school education.
  2. Career counsellors identify careers that match student needs and aspirations – sometimes with help from aptitude and psychometric tests – and recommend appropriate careers as well as college/university programmes to the students.
  3. Students choose one career from the set of career options recommended, and pursue it through college/university and by picking up degrees, diplomas, certificates to build their knowledge and credentials.
  4. Students are hired by organisations either through campus interviews or by applying to jobs on their own or by using their (parents’) networks.

A good job is almost always one that’s in a large reputed organisation or in the government. Jobs of both types offer a combination of security, pay, anticipated opportunities for growth and career advancement. Every other type of job possesses a lower priority. A college/university education – and the degrees that come with it – simply prepares the students to meet this goal. This means both college and university education and the counselling/recommendation career counsellors offer prepare students to enter the workforce in the best possible ways.

However, in the past ten years, the global economy and the nature of work – and, in turn, the job market – have changed substantially. But within this universe, higher education reforms, curricula and faculty have failed to stay abreast with technology in the industry. Much of the education and the degrees students obtain from colleges and universities are outdated with reference to what the employers demand from their fresh recruits.

[Continued to Part 2]

Where do you look for a job when you’re stepping out of college?

Stepping out of college or university is one of those watershed periods in a student’s life. The lucky ones go through campus interviews and step into a new world with job offers in their hands. But the majority of students in India and across the globe haven’t a clue about what to do or where to go.

Most colleges and universities don’t have career guidance facilities available for students, and parents and college professors aren’t much help either. Usually, students stumble along looking for jobs through family and friends, or through the internet, hoping to get lucky. Many never do. Sadly, this has been the situation for years, driving some students into despair and desperation.

Reputed colleges and universities do have guidance counsellors – though, when I speak to students, I hear that most counsellors lack sufficient knowledge (of the thousands of careers available for them) or the motivation to guide the students. Thereby, leaving students as clueless as their parents were 30 years ago. So, the question still remains: where do you look for a job when you’re stepping out of college?

Fortunately, there’s a great deal of information about jobs and companies available on the internet and in the mainstream media which makes job hunting a lot easier for students. For instance, you could start by finding out who are the best employers to work for in India. To help you along, here are two sources of such information: A Great Place To Work’s India’s Best Companies To Work For 2014 and Universum’s India’s Ideal Employers 2014.

Business Today magazine had also published an article on The best companies to work for in August 2014.

Not a respectable career choice

A recent article, titled Indian graduates, especially women, don’t want to work for startups, by Diksha Madhok in Quartz India talks about the reluctance or disinterest Indian engineering graduates have in joining and working for startups. The article is based on a recent study of 120,000 students who graduated last year from more than 500 engineering colleges.

The study, which was done by Gurgaon (Haryana) based career consulting firm Aspiring Minds, finds that only 6% of engineering graduates (both male and female students) would aspire to work for startups. Another 32% would consider small and medium enterprises as a career choice; while 62% of engineering students would prefer working for bigger companies.

The article mentions that, in comparison, 18% of students in China and nearly 50% of students in the US have indicated their interest in working for startups or small companies – broadly described as businesses employing less than 100 persons. That’s probably because India’s startup industry is in its nascent stages and the startup ecosystem is yet to be formed, suggests the article.

The article also offers possible reasons for such reluctance to seek employment at startups and/or small companies by graduate engineering students:

One of the reasons for such a lukewarm response is that working for startups is still not considered a respectable career choice by one’s family and peers. Startups tend to lack job security and the resources of larger firms.

“At a social gathering, you want to show off and tell people that you work for a big, famous company,” says Varun Aggarwal, director at Aspiring Minds. “If you work for a big brand, your marital prospects are also better.”

[Citation: Indian graduates, especially women, don’t want to work for startups by Diksha Madhok in Quartz India; Aspiring Minds, Gurgaon.]