The Confederation of Indian Industry's Employability Bridge Initiative would help around 100 firms in Tamil Nadu to identify potential candidates for fresh recruitment from over 30 colleges in the State. In order to ensure quality eduction and bridge the gap between industry and academia, CII launched the 'Employability Bridge' early this year. What is more, around 15,000 students are likely to benefit from this initiative. The industry body has identified Surgeforth Technologies as the programme management partner for this initiative.
Speaking to the media in Chennai today, Ranganath NK, Chairman of CII Tamil Nadu State Council and Managing Director of Grundfors Pumps India said: "The Employability Bridge acts as an enabler to improve the employability quotient of the participating students, exposing the aspirant's strengths to employers and further enables in getting right opportunity (internship, projects and jobs) from the employers. It is also a plaform for synergising efforts from various stakeholders namely industry, academia and students to address the skill requirement and availability for the industry".
The official continued: "Employability Bridge provides opportunity management for the industry, placement management for the institutions and continuous employability enhancement learning opportunity for the students. Some of the positive and cost-effectove aspects of the Bridge are the use of technology to leverage and collaborate, take into consideration input from industry as well as academia in terms of challenges, bring together specialised best employability training partners for each domain or area". Ranganath further added that the Bridge proposed to extend the reach of CII member firms to the talent pool available in the Tier-II and Tier-III colleges spread across the southern region.
Photography: M Sathyan.
Ambalavanan Ramachandran, Director of Surgeforth Technologies said: "The institutions which have signed MoU to subscribe to the Employability Bridge platform, which include PPG Institute of Technology, Combatore; DMI Engineering College and SKR Engineering College in Chennai; SRG Engineering College of Namakkal; JJ College of Engineering and Technology in Trichy and SACS MAVMM Engineering College of Madurai. Many CII member companies have also come forward to make use of this platform".
He said: "Under the platform, students will be provided employability training on industry driven competencies comprising of classroom sessions, e-learning and self assessments. Furthermore, the industry provides the students with opportunities such as internships, projects and jobs. Students participating in the Employability Bridge will be certified on their skills during the programme. The initiative is to cover technical skills like embedded systems, VLSI design, telecommunications, e-governance, networking technologies and office applications and also soft skills like business English, individual effectiveness, organisational effectiveness, general aptitute, placement readiness and sofware engineering areas which focus on enhancing professional readiness and employability".
Moreover, the Bridge is also proposed to be expanded to technical domain such as life sciences, bio-technology, civil and structural engineering and reach out to around 50 colleges in southern region. Currently, around 2,000 students are using this platform. Other initiatives of CII Tamil Nadu includes the College Excellence Cluster, which was started in 2009. Through this initiative, CII is offering CEO, CXO interactive session, faculty mission and students mission to industries. College Excellence Cluster initiative is active in Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore and Erode. Rajalakshmi Engineering College, SRM University, Hindustan University, Abdur Rahman Crescent Engineering College are part of this year's Chennai Cluster initiative.
