NOT JUST AN

EMPLOYABILITY
REPORT
EMPLOYABILITY & THE NEW GENERATION

Employability is a significant, long-standing and much talked about challenge in

our country. This concern is prevalent across all industry sectors, but more so, for
knowledge, jobs and sectors, like IT & ITeS, that contributed $181 billion (7.7%) to
the nation’s GDP in 2018-19. Despite a million engineers graduating every year,
corporate India struggles to identify ‘employable’ talent. Hence, one witnessed a
splurge of finishing schools and training institutes imparting ‘job-ready’ skills to
graduates, post years of their formal education. These interventions met partial
success in the formative years of the high-growth technology sector, but today we
are faced with two other rapid developments – Automation & Aspiration – that
are reshaping the Employability landscape.

Automation of jobs and role of Machine Learning encouraged the World Economic
Forum (WEF) to profess that by 2022, 42% of jobs across industries will be
performed by machines. Earlier this year, WEF confirmed robots will displace 75
million jobs globally by 2022, but that 133 million new jobs will be created - a net
positive of 58 million. These jobs will demand a different set of skills. Is today’s
talent ready to make this leap?

As Gen X matures and heads towards retirement, millennials and Gen Z which
constitute a massive 75% of working population scream for attention. First-hand
evidence indicates this generation that has grown with speed at their fingertips is
in no hurry to settle for a job. Experience and travel are equally important to them,
and they expect prospective employers to be ‘worthy’ of hiring them.

01
Given the context of Industrial Revolution 4.0, and the emerging tension between
expectations of employers and aspirations of to-be-employed, we decided to take a broader
view of the subject. We surveyed over 12,000 engineering students across various institutes,
met over 500 of them personally and studied the online behavior of over 400,000. We
juxtaposed their aspirations with the demands of the corporate. We focused our research
primarily on engineering graduates, whom we understand well due to our close engagement
with over 2000 engineering institutes and numerous small, medium and large enterprises.

At Aon, we also take pride in enabling #EqualOpportunity for students from diverse
backgrounds, regardless of their income and social strata. We follow this dream through our
employability test, CoCubes, which has been serving the cause for over 12 years. This research
is our attempt to address the Employability challenge with a bi-focal lens and share
recommendations for Institutes and Corporates to solve this challenge.

Mind the Employability Gap

Institute Corporate
Follow ever-evolving Inclusive brand
job demands

‘Life’ skills, Their experience,

not just skills not your process

Be the Create learning

torchbearer ecosystem

02
CONTENTS

1
METHODOLOGY
AND PARTNERS

2 ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
• Follow ever-evolving job demands
• ‘Life’ skills, not just skills
• Be the torchbearer

3 ROLE OF THE CORPORATE

• Inclusive brand
• Their experience, not your process
• Create a learning ecosystem

4 LOOKING FORWARD

03
METHODOLOGY
AND PARTNERS
12,000 CANDIDATES FOR ONLINE SURVEY

TIER 1 - 143

TIER 2 - 787 TIER 3 - 11070

MALE - 7565 FEMALE - 4435

METRO - 4079

NON-METRO - 7921

04
PARTNER INSTITUTES
FOR THE RESEARCH

ROUP
FOCUS G

EPTH
IN-D IEWS
RV
INTE

GN
& DESI
ARC H
RESE PARTNER

05
ROLE OF
THE INSTITUTION

06
 FOLLOW EVER-EVOLVING JOB DEMANDS

Job demands evolve basis consumers’ expectations. We regularly observe that new skills and
competencies are added to the formal job descriptions. Ones who exhibit capabilities aligned with
such skills deserve (and receive) better job opportunities and higher salaries. Besides engaging
with companies to forecast these developments, institutes can closely observe the nature of
assessments conducted by the preferred employers. These typically give away an evolving need,
which if addressed proactively, can yield rich dividends for graduating students and positively
impact an institute’s image.

Over the last 15 years, we have witnessed the job assessments change from selecting basis largely
academic performance to assessing cognitive abilities and application of domain learning. English
and written communication became a basic requirement enroute, while now corporates are
overlaying it with behavioral and complex coding tests.

07
ASSESSMENTS USED TO SELECT CANDIDATES:

2004:
Only interviews

2007:
Group discussions
followed by interviews

2009:
Cognitive ability tests

2012:
Domain assessments
2013:
Coding assessments

2016:
Personality
2017: assessments
Gamified
assessments
Hackathons

2019:
Video interviews

08
KEY JOB ROLES WITH IT Services
• Cognitive Ability
THEIR REQUIRED • Communication Skills
• Computer Fundamentals
SKILLS

IT Product
• Cognitive Ability
• Programming Skills

Core Engineering
• Cognitive Ability
• Domain Knowledge
• Communication Skills

Analytics
• Cognitive Ability
• Programming Basics
• Communication Skills

9
CURRENT SKILL LEVELS WHEN BENCHMARKED WITH INDUSTRY
REQUIREMENT
A quick preview on actual candidates’ performance against these much-desired skills tells us a story of
weak performance - one that leaves the students under-prepared for future jobs and career growth.

4%
7%
18%

35%
Need training

Coding 89% 47% Cognitive Need practice

Ability
Employable
60%

30%

10%
Aa
C
g Written
A English

Despite significant focus, skill levels (depicted by average % scores) in critical skills have remained
constant (more or less). Programming skills have improved over the last 3 years however they still remain
poor, which makes the job of corporate tough. Likewise, cognitive ability and communication skills have
remained flat.

2017
2018
13%
11%

50%

47%

50%
45%

48%

48%

2019
7%

Coding Cognitive Ability Written English

The Tier wise constitution of data for above chart is as follows: Tier 1- 5% Tier 2- 12% Tier 3- 83% Sample size - 3.75 Lakh students over 3 years

10
Certain institutes do provide specific trainings to improve employability viz. Technical (including
coding), Personal Interview (PI), Group Discussion (GD), and Aptitude Tests, however the feedback from
students leaves scope for improvement.

WHAT ARE INSTITUTES FOCUSED ON

Personal
Interview
Technical
42.3%
50.3%

Group
Discussion
46%

Aptitude
Tests
52.3%

Despite the best efforts of institutes and training organizations, students’ current employability
levels are fairly low.

“
“
We have a CRT
training
The college does zilch. program that trains
We have to prepare us on aptitude,

”
everything on our own

“
technical and HR

”
rounds of interviews

We get training on
soft skills and the
classes happen
every week

11
 Everyone knows this intuitively, but no one has measured this… Until Now!

As is intuitive, the more advanced candidates’ skill levels, the higher their compensation for the
requisite job roles. It is important, that our report and data are able to put precise numbers on skill
levels and compensation for said profiles and tiers. This helps companies hire smart and help
institutes (and thus, students) have the right expectations.
Companies compete for talent. Institutes try to enhance employability of students. And so, both
want to understand difficulty of assessments, for given roles and compensation. While
compensation is very objective, difficulty of the assessment is subjective. One relies on experience
of assessment providers and hit and trial methods to arrive at the desired complexity.

ASC(Aon’s Scale of Complexity)

Compensation 4 9 lpa
3.5
2
8 lpa
8 lpa
2.5

6 lpa 1.6
3.5
8 lpa
2 6 lpa

4 lpa
1.3
1 4 lpa

2 lpa
3 6 lpa 1
The Tougher the The Better You
Programming, Communicate,
the Higher the Salary the Higher You are Paid 2 lpa

These are non-transferrable and

2.5
4 lpa non-standard. Through this report,
we would like to address this
problem. We hereby introduce
Aon’s Scale of Complexity (ASC) –
2 a metric that can be adhered to
Cognitive Ability while measuring complexity of the
2 lpa Difficultty Level Range assessment and mapping it to
By Compensation compensation for given roles.

12
Silver lining from the outskirts of Karnataka

One of the private engineering colleges in Karnataka (one of our partner institutes) was facing
low conversion rate at placements. Students lacked information about the skills required and felt
under-prepared despite concerted effort by both management and placement cell.

The College introduced CoCubes’ ‘Continuous Evaluation Program’ for 2nd and 3rd year
students, who were assessed candidates on desired skills. The diagnostic assessment and
skill-gap analysis gave specific feedback and identified improvement areas for the students. Our
analysis showed that only 5% students were direct fit for industry jobs, while 59% had
strong potential to improve.

The college proactively acted upon the

feedback and started systematic and
customized training to address the gaps.
Employability for job roles that required
cognitive ability improved 1.5 times, while
those with basic programming skills (IT
Product roles) jumped 2.4 times.

13
 ‘LIFE’ SKILLS, NOT JUST SKILLS

Beyond the domain knowledge and skills required to perform basic functions of the job, competencies and
behaviors are much sought after to seek an employability fit. In fact, as the machine learns and the work
environment requires better understanding of consumer needs, these life-skills are finding favour more than
it did in the past.

WHAT COMPANIES WANT?

eed
vio
Beha
g Sp
Typin
king
h Wr ing
Spea ility
iting

l i s h
Eng nitive Ab
eak
ty
d

Cog
Englgramming
Spee

h Sp
riting
bili

riting
ing
amm
sh W

ility
Progr nitive Ab vior
s

sh W
is

Engli
i
A

Cog
Pro
l
g

Beha
g

eed
g Sp
vior

ogni g Speed

Engli
Typin
Typin

En

ming
e

ram eed
v

g Sp

iting
Prog
bility

Typin
vior
i
Beha

r
Typin

Beha

r
t

W
lish ge
riting

ing
tive A

ramm

o
dge
Enmgain Knowled
Prog

i
ing
owle r
lish W

n amm
K Progr

v
ain vio
i
Cogn

Dom king Beha

ha
Do
C
Eng

eed
ng g Sp
mmi
pea Typin
lish S
Eng
ra

Be
Prog
d
Spee g
Typin

Originally, behavioral assessments were valued more in the customer-facing roles, and it was assumed that
engineering / technology roles (geeks) don’t really need to focus on them. However, today’s agile working
teams are making behaviors front-and-centre of the role expectations. Further, now we have the advantage
of proven science that link high performance to the behavioral assessment scores.

14
 One such example is a leading Indian bank is enclosed, where top 20% candidates with higher
scores on behavioral assessments had 1.5 times better sales performance than bottom 20% of the
group.

Leading Indian Bank Hiring for Entry-Level Sales Employees

Bottom 20% Top 20%

Sales Target Achievement Sales Target Achievement

70.6% 106.1%

Comparing Job Performance of Low v/s High Scores on Assessment

Behavioral Assessment Scores and Corresponding Candidates in the top 20% of the group basis
Job Performance of Candidates
scores on the behavioral competency have 1.5x
80 better sales performance on the job as
Candidate Assessment Score

70 compared to those in the bottom 20% of the

60 group. This indicates that the assessment is
50 able to differentiate between low and high
40 performers.
30

20
0% 50% 100% 150% 200% 250% 300% No wonder technology sector clients with
Sales Target Achievement % digital strategies at the helm of their growth
are asking us to measure Learnability, Curiosity
and Agility, along with technical skills.
Institutes need to take a cue from such trends.

15
 BE THE TORCHBEARER

As per a national
daily report on 5th December
2020, 50 suicides were witnessed at IIT campuses in
the last 5 years. The committee investigating the causes reported that
many students are unable to cope with the academic pressure. One of the important
recommendations was to strengthen the counselling services for the students. It also observed
that students from rural areas with poor language abilities and social skills are most vulnerable.

Institutes need to help students settle down in a new environment, as well as counsel them to
identify most appropriate career choices. Today, there is abundance of options within every
stream, and the new generation is willing to experiment (assuming they understand these choic-
es). Hence, they should be guided on a path that appeals to their natural predispositions, which
creates an interesting opportunity for institutes to engage candidates with scientific and unbiased
advice.

Vodafone as part of their CSR activity (#FutureJobFinder) assessed over 1.2 million youth through
an 8-minute personality and preferences test. Aon helped create the same and matched individual
profiles with over 120 future digital jobs across 27 job families. The outcome was linked to external
job sites like Indeed that connected aspirants with opportunities around the world (and places that
they wanted to live in and see).

An early identification of an individual’s self and linkage to jobs would improve students’ interest
levels and employability in an ever-evolving job realm. And what better than following one’s passion!
Hence, our last recommendation for Institutes is to be the torchbearer and preferred
counsellors.

16
ROLE OF
THE CORPORATE
Corporates too play an active role in engaging the new generation and improving employability
metrics. Besides offering them roles and opportunities that appeal to their passion, corporates can
help them continuously learning and grow. Overall, relationship between employers and employees
is increasingly about experience, and this journey begins with the Brand.

17
 INCLUSIVE BRAND

Finding great talent today is akin to finding a ‘needle in the haystack’, and the brand helps an employer cast
its net far and wide. One’s ability to differentiate its brand in the employment market helps attract talent
from unexplored quarters. One such example is that of 20-year old Ankita Chawla, who applied
out-of-the-box thinking while looking for her first job. She uploaded her creative profile on Instagram
highlighting her achievements, interests, skills and improvement areas.

Outcome: Ankita was hired as a visual content creator at Deloitte! Well done Deloitte for being present
online and getting creative with its recruitment process.
Similar outreach about quality of jobs and technology-based learning draws the younger generation to the
workforce, and proactively addresses employability gaps. This has positive impact both for an individual
and an organization, as well as for society at large.

We asked students during our study on influences that help them decide on a job, and online brand
had close to 50% role, regardless of the tier.

50%
online platforms

29%
feedback from
21%
inputs from
seniors/alums faculty & family

18 Above chart data is basis 12,000 students

TA = TALENT ATTRACTION
A good reference is your ‘Glassdoor Rating’. If attracting good coders and top-notch salespeople is a
priority, then a company must check its Glassdoor rating. Are people happy while working in the
organization? How are applicants treated when they apply? Do they know precisely how many rounds
of interviews? Would you make a prospective customer wait?

Glassdoor ratings have a significant impact on candidates’ preference while applying for a job. We see
this time and again on CoCubes.com, where companies post jobs. We see that Glassdoor rating
significantly impacts volume and quality of application keeping the type of role, company, location and
compensation constant, there is a jump as high as 350% in applications, from a 3.5 to a 4.5 Glassdoor
rating. Glassdoor ratings have a significant impact on candidates’ preference while applying for a job.

4-4.5

3.5-4 605
453
3-3.5

184

Average # Applications
(per Job Listing)

Higher glassdoor rating = More applications

19
CAN #SHECODE?
Engineering colleges typically have a lower (approximately 20%) female to male ratio, thus
impacting this company’s plan to hire 100 qualified “she-coders” at a salary of INR 20 lakh per
annum and above. Campus-by-campus approach to draw talent would have been prohibitively
expensive and time consuming. The company leveraged Aon’s CoCubes platform to tap into
Aon’s deep campus relationships and database of pre-assessed candidates. Cognitive and
skill-based (coding) assessments were designed bespoke and tests conducted, eventually
leading to 250+ #SheCoders over 3 years.

One can imagine the favor this company now finds with prospective female candidates on
campus, and its contribution to improving employability with diversity hiring.

20
 THEIR EXPERIENCE, NOT YOUR PROCESS
Treating job applicants with the same, if not higher, significance as a paying customer is paramount. In
contrast, our primary research showed that a shocking 63% of candidates reported concerns about the
duration of the process and odd interview timings.

20%
23% 17% Duration of the process
Odd interview timings
40%
Expenses incurred
Others

Incomplete
Information
Delay in given during
interview placements
rounds
No
feedback Delays
shared between
selection
Intimation of stages Delay in
dates is late declaration of
results after
interview

21 Above chart data is basis 12,000 students

To make matters worse, companies take inordinate amount of time in application review, interview
scheduling and offer generation. This flies in the face of 'instant gratification' that this new generation is
used to.

Glassdoor rating Glassdoor rating

Avg Avg

3.5 3.5

2.5

4.5
2.5

4.5

40 days to hire 15 days to hire

Interestingly, we see that companies that score lower on Glassdoor also take significantly longer in the
recruitment process. Our database (CoCubes.com) shows that companies that have an average of 3.5
rating on Glassdoor take 40 days from Posting a job to releasing offers. This is in stark contrast to the
companies which score an average of 4.5 on Glassdoor which take 15 days to hire.

We recommend that organizations adopt shorter and scientific assessments for their process, which has
multi-fold advantages:

a) Ease/convenience of anytime-anywhere assessments

b) Incremental validity of successful hires through behavioural science
c) Data to eliminate human biases; and
d) Superior candidate experience around process and brand of the company

Aon’s Assessment Solutions are built with the above as our core value proposition and hence enable
employability agenda for all our stakeholders.

Deductive Logical Reasoning Working Memory - Grid Challenge

-Switch Challenge Measures working memory and
Measures deductive logical attention, and the ability to quickly
reasoning learn information
Duration: 6 mins Duration: 12 mins

Our research also validated that this ever online generation, interestingly, has a clear preference for
companies when their engagement is ‘deeper’. Live projects, internships, on-campus drives, and
hackathons are key differentiators for top recruiters.

22
 Our research also validated that the ever-online Millennials and Gen Z have a clear
preference for companies, when their engagement is ‘deeper’. Live projects, internships,
on-campus drives, and hackathons are key differentiators for the top recruiters at campus.

What Sets Recruiters Apart

4%
Sponsor College 2%
Events/Advertisements Alumni Connect
Sessions/Guest Lectures

8%
Career Counselling
Sessions
28%
Live Company Projects

19%
Corporate
Competitions/Hackathons
19%
Internships/Pre-placement
20% Offers
On Campus
Drives/Pre-placement Talks

Besides creating an immersive experience with students, above measures also open the doors for
companies to demonstrate their culture and learning opportunities they create. Students value
these immensely and reward potential employers with positive feedback. You will recall close to
30% weightage on choosing an employer comes from feedback from seniors.

23 Above chart data is basis 12,000 students

 As per our study, Google, TCS and Infosys have emerged as the top
‘brands’ on Campus amongst engineering graduates.

Amazing managers
who act as mentors.
Internal
opportunities are
Good package, great
awesome culture, GOOGLE
tasty food,
employee-friendly
policies
Employee
focused

Onsite
opportunities
Good TATA
company to
start a career in
CONSULTANCY
and grow SERVICES
professional
network

Job
security

Work-life
balance

Great training
facility that INFOSYS
provides hands-on
experience
Great work
culture

Students follow their dream employers and gather information that impacts their perception.
Given their primary interest in quality of job, learning and career opportunities, we
recommend focus on these as our third and final recommendation to the Corporates.

24
 CREATE LEARNING ECOSYSTEM
The fact that Generation Z spends an inordinate amount of time online is not front-page news. It is however
interesting to note that these online platforms are being increasingly used to consume ‘learning’ content.

Learning Online

1-5 hours 42% 1-5 hours 45% 1-5 hours 30%

< 1 hour 10% < 1 hour 35% < 1 hour 63%

Do not use 48% Do not use 20% Do not use 7%

INSTAGRAM

YOUTUBE
FACEBOOK

Students’ propensity to be online is also being leveraged by educators. Educational institutes are
embracing online platforms such as Coursera, Edx and others for their immense product offering.

I am using websites
like Indiabix to
prepare for aptitude
tests

IndiaBix
Coursera

On Glassdoor, we
get the questions I mostly prepare
asked in interviews through websites like
Glassdoor, Internshala

Adoption of ‘learning online’ and creating systems around this will go a long way in improving student
engagement and employability.

25
BLENDED EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

Kishore Kumar M, a student in the department of public health at one of India’s top ranked private research
institutes, felt the course on hospital management was steeped in theory. He needed practical and
implementable inputs+feedback that was endorsed by the faculty members. The institute partnered with
Coursera and provided a learning platform on the subject, and extended it across various disciplines and
skill levels. In addition to meeting the desired goal, Coursera provided faculty members an opportunity to
upskill and reskill across various domains. Today, almost 200,000 hours of learning has already been
clocked via this program, making it one of the largest learning program on Coursera.

Similar adoption of learning and competition platforms by Corporate is also seeing an uptrend.
Organizations like TCS (with CodeVita), Infosys (with ‘Connect’), Wipro (with WASE and WISTA) run their
own programs on campus, that include specific employability and faculty development initiatives. Such
collaboration between Corporates and Institutes will go a long way to improve India’s employability
challenge.

26
LOOKING FORWARD
A girl from a college in Thanjavur posted her video on Facebook that she got a job in Adobe as a
developer at a salary of 22 lakh per annum. Her college had used assessments to identify gaps in her
learning. She had picked up content courses on one of the MOOC platforms to improve her proficiency.
Adobe used online assessment tools to widen reach, attract applications and identify talent (one of them
was Harini Sampath).

Was this possible 10 years ago? Were the colleges and companies experimenting at this scale 7 years
ago? Were the new generation aware of such opportunities 5 years ago?

Some of us might say “yes” to the above, but all of us will agree that the mindset of stakeholders involved
has changed in the last one decade. Technology has removed barriers and created new vistas of
collaboration. The secret ingredient to solving the Employability challenge is the aspiration of the newer
generation. With the right direction and immersive engagement with them, the problem of
employability will soon be a thing of the past.

We hope this report has left you with thoughts on addressing our nation’s biggest talent challenge, and
most importantly, hope.

bes
cocu
aon_ p
y Ga
abilit
m ploy
the E
Twitter Summary

Mind
Institutes need to focus on #ContinuousEvaluation, Behaviours & helping #GenZ with #PathFinder.
Corporate need to create #learning ecosystem, be conscious that they are under the scanner and offer a
#hiring #Experience not #process

bes
cocu men
ts
aon_ 5 com
all 24
View O
YS AG
2 DA

27
References

1. Lata Jha, “What Really Matters to Millennials, Gen Z” Mint, June 2019
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/what-really-matters-to-millennials-gen-z-1561573198602.html
2. Manipal Academy of Higher Education, www.manipal.edu
3. Coursera for Business, www.coursera.org
4. Glassdoor, www.glassdoor.com
5. BBMG Corporation Ltd., www.genzreckoning.com
6. Kavya Vashisht, “Watch & Learn: 20-Year-Old Girl Made A Creative Instagram Resume & Landed A
Kickass Job!” Popxo, June 2019
https://www.popxo.com/trending/20-year-old-girl-made-an-instagram-resume-and-got-hired-without-i
nterview-831342/
7. Erin Engstrom, “Recruiting on Instagram: 4 Companies Crushing It” Recruiterbox
https://recruiterbox.com/blog/recruiting-on-instagram-4-companies-crushing-it
8. Ben Slater, “13 of The Most Creative Recruitment Campaigns” Social Hire
https://social-hire.com/blog/recruitment/13-of-the-most-creative-recruitment-campaigns
9. https://www.facebook.com/cocubes/videos/392451208165004/
10. Tiers have been determined basis clusters of scores in 3 key areas: Cognitive, Written Communication
and Coding ability. We plotted the average scores (and mean distribution of scores across a batch of
students) for colleges and we got approximately 3 clusters. We refer to these 3 clusters as Tiers.
For reference: Tier 1 includes Older IIT’s, BITS Pilani.; Tier 2 includes Newer IIT’s, NIT’s, Some select
private universities. Tier 3 would practically include every other college.

28
Contact
To learn more about Aon’s Assessment Solutions,
visit us at: assessment.aon.com