Dr Akhil Shahani | MD, The Shahani Group; Chairman, Global Discovery Schools

Dr Akhil Shahani | MD, The Shahani Group; Chairman, Global Discovery Schools

• Dr. Shahani is the managing director of the Shahani Group.
• He runs a franchise range of colleges in areas like Business, Media, Real Estate, and Finance.

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We read about high rates of unemployed youth in India, but is the lack of jobs a problem or their lack of employability is always a question of debate? Though both reasons have contributed to the problem of unemployment, today we discuss what makes young graduates unemployable. We discuss the crux of the issue and possible answers to the problem.

[00:32] – About Dr. Akhil Shahani

• Dr. Shahani is the managing director of the Shahani Group.
• He runs a franchise range of colleges in areas like Business, Media, Real Estate, and Finance.
• He runs an ed-tech platform which is “ask.careers” and a recruitment firm which is “Ask Talent Services.”
• He is the chairman of Global Discovery Schools.
• Dr. Shahani has been one of the top 50 thought leaders in education and has been recognized and felicitated several times. 

[05:40] – How are you working with diverse businesses and managing them so well?

• In spite of education, we’re not able to get graduates.
• It is obviously not an issue of money or a willingness for the academic community.
•  We tried to understand the meaning of employability. If you want to make someone successful in life, first make them successful in their careers. 
• I researched around 250 companies and universities around the world and realized that the problem is that nobody has a definition.
• What happens is that when you ask a new recruiter what are you looking for in an employer or candidate, the recruiter will come up with things like someone who would get the job done. They say things like that they want an ambitious person or someone who got the spark in the eye.
• Most of the job portals come up with a piece of very stupid qualitative information like “wanted dynamic proactive sales guy” or “someone who can get the job done”.
•  When you are looking from Academia, the academics would need to come up with standards that they can teach towards and which will be applicable across all sectors from commerce to science to engineering.
• Since there are no measurable standards of employability that are defined by the corporate world, academics besides exams and maybe assignments do not understand how to develop people.
• After my research, I decided to define employability.
• We have defined basically five lower common denominator things, what would every employer want. 
• One is the person with strong communication, strong collaboration, capability, strong critical thinking, a proactive mindset, and a professional work ethic.
• We have created a complete education model that develops students on these parameters to make them employable. 
• The manifestation of that is that we are able to make people employable right across the management group.

[15:51] – Where is the mismatch between the kids who are coming out after all this pressure cooker system that they’re going and then not being found suitable enough by potential employers?

• The whole issue of lack of employability is a recent phenomenon.
• The 70s and 80s people never said the unemployable candidates because companies in those days who are happy to spend at least six months to a year or more creating their people will get a kid from any environment.
• The employer would say look we are going to keep you on for life so we will spend a lot of time and effort training you to become productive.
• Today, employers want people to be trained ready-made out of college.
•  The second thing is that when you look at what jobs were like in the 70s and 80s and 90s till more repetitive jobs. That means that you could sit down and do data entry, and do basic stuff which is what computers are doing today, but those could get away with just doing repetitive stuff.
• Today all the repetitive stuff is being automated, so, therefore they expect students to think independently, be resilient, get the job done, but the kids don’t have the training from Academia.

RESOURCES:

You can connect with Dr. Akhil Shahani – LinkedIn 

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Thanks for listening! 

• Dr. Shahani is the managing director of the Shahani Group.
• He runs a franchise range of colleges in areas like Business, Media, Real Estate, and Finance.
• He runs an ed-tech platform which is “ask.careers” and a recruitment firm which is “Ask Talent Services.”
• He is the chairman of Global Discovery Schools.
• Dr. Shahani has been one of the top 50 thought leaders in education and has been recognized and felicitated several times.