Abdul Jaleel, the Senior Director of Human Resources at Adobe for Asia Pacific and Japan, talks with HER magazine on the various shortcomings that IT sector is finding in the Education Sector and how it can be improved.
Q. Most young graduates are not job ready. According to you, what steps need to be taken to guarantee that they are job ready?
Jaleel: Today's education model focuses on the content which is completely misaligned with needs of the job market. It doesn't impart strong body of knowledge coupled with life skills. There will need to be a strong debate in the country amongst policy makers, educationists and employer groups on the need for overhauling the syllabus.
Q. In your opinion, apart from covering the usual syllabus, what should be the focus of any institution to place their students in a good position?
Jaleel: The institutions in India must see to it that all their syllabi should reflect the reality of the changing needs of the market. It is a sad state today where most of the educational syllabi in India are very old and outdated. The focus of the institution should be on developing the thinking capabilities of the students rather than testing their memory. Every institution should be thinking about how well it is equipping its students to face and address the challenges of life.
Q. What do you look for in an institute before recruiting future employees from the same?
Jaleel: We ensure to look at multiple parameters while planning to recruit employees who have just completed their studies. The parameters that we observe carefully are the quality of teachers, quality of intake/rigor of filtration, quality of infrastructure, relevance of courses taught and agility of the institute to adapt. We ensure that the institution qualifies these parameters as we would like to employ students who are almost job ready.
Q. Could you mention a few industry initiatives which will ensure that a student can be job-ready?
Jaleel: The Industry must increase the number of opportunities to collaborate with the academia in terms of internship, on-site research for students and faculty and exchange of guest faculty. However, the vital essence that is needed in today's education sector today is the necessity of bringing Industry experts on the board of institutes to ensure market relevance.
Q. What would be your advice to an institute's management who is looking to improve their pedagogy?
Jaleel: An institution must deeply understand the needs of the market place and be agile enough to develop courses and a corresponding pedagogy which will benefit the students and the industry.
Jaleel Abdul currently leads a team of HR professionals spread across Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Beijing and Delhi and has worked prior with organizations such as Wipro, Motorola and VeriSign. In his free time, he loves to listen to jazz music and is an ardent fan of Ayn Rand.
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