Beyond degrees and hiring: What employers, educators and institutions must do differently

By: Ram Kolavennu

India produces millions of graduates every year, yet employers across sectors say they struggle to find people ready for the work in front of them. Both statements are true at once. That is the paradox at the heart of India’s talent ecosystem: we have never had more qualified young people, and we have rarely been less sure that qualifications tell us what we need to know.

The usual response is to point at students. They lack skills, they are not job-ready, they chose the wrong course. That framing lets the rest of us off too lightly. The gap between a degree and workplace readiness is not a student problem. It is a system problem, and closing it asks employers, educators and institutions to rethink how talent is built.

Three shifts have pulled qualifications and readiness apart. First, skills now date faster than syllabi change. AI and automation reshape roles within a few years, while curricula are revised far less often. Second, work has become interdisciplinary. An engineer needs to understand data, a doctor digital tools, a lawyer technology and regulation, yet most programmes are still taught in silos. Third, what employers value most, such as judgement, communication, collaboration and the ability to learn, is precisely what examinations measure least.

There is also an access problem. Talent is spread across India’s small towns and first-generation households, but the networks that turn a degree into a career are not. Internships, referrals and informal advice still flow mostly to students who already know someone. When hiring leans on campus pedigree and connections, organisations narrow their own talent pool before the first interview.

Hire for skills, not only pedigree. Skills-based hiring is widely discussed and less widely practised. Assessing what candidates can do, through work samples, problem-solving tasks and structured interviews, rather than where they studied widens the pool and can improve fit.

Show up before the hiring season. Most employers meet students only when they are recruiting, by which point there is little left to shape. Organisations that engage early, through mentoring, live projects, guest teaching and paid internships, help build the capabilities they will later hire for. CSR and employee volunteering can be directed here to real effect, particularly when they connect professionals with students who have no industry networks of their own.

Own development after the offer letter. Expecting graduates to arrive fully formed is unrealistic when roles change every few years. Structured onboarding, apprenticeships and ongoing learning budgets are not perks; they are how organisations close the readiness gap on their own terms. HR leaders who treat learning as infrastructure rather than an event will build more resilient workforces.

Bring the workplace into the classroom. Live industry projects, case-based learning and co-designed electives make curricula more relevant without waiting for a full syllabus revision. Faculty need the same exposure: short industry immersions help teachers stay close to how their fields are changing.

Teach for transfer, not only for examinations. Critical thinking, communication and collaboration deserve to be assessed with the same seriousness as technical knowledge. Students learn what is measured.

Make career guidance part of education, not an afterthought. In many colleges, career support arrives in the final semester as placement preparation, after students have made most of their choices with limited information. Guidance that starts early helps them understand emerging roles, test their interests and build a direction rather than chase a single offer. In my work with first-generation students, structured mentoring from working professionals has proved one of the most powerful levers, because it gives young people both information and confidence.

Build partnerships that outlast the MoU. Industry–academia collaborations too often begin with a signing ceremony and end there. The ones that work have shared goals, named owners on both sides and regular reviews of what students are learning and where they land.

Recognise learning wherever it happens. Credit frameworks that let students carry certifications, internships and online courses into their academic record, a direction the National Education Policy 2020 points towards, reduce the artificial divide between education and employability.

Widen access deliberately. Government bodies, industry associations, foundations and companies each hold part of the answer. Pooling effort on mentoring, internships and digital skilling for students from under-served regions and backgrounds will do more for India’s talent pipeline than any single organisation acting alone.

Make lifelong learning the norm. A degree can no longer mark the end of formal learning. Institutions that offer flexible, modular routes back into education for working professionals will matter as much as those that serve school-leavers.

India’s demographic advantage becomes an economic one only if the young people entering the workforce are ready for work that is still taking shape. That will not happen if each part of the ecosystem waits for another to move. Employers cannot hire their way out of the skills gap, educators cannot teach in isolation from industry, and institutions cannot treat employability as someone else’s job.

The shift we need is from hiring talent to building it, together. Degrees will remain important. But the organisations that thrive in the next decade will be those that look beyond them, to potential, to skills and to the partnerships that turn one into the other.