Tackling Unemployment & Skills Crisis: India needs role-relevant assessment and certification

By Fiona Collins

 

 

 

 

 

 

India today is impacted by a dichotomy of joblessness on one hand and increasing difficulty in hiring trained, role-specific talent on the other. And this is an indication of a deepening crisis affecting every sector nationwide.

The country recorded  an unemployment rate of 9.9 per cent, an increase of 5 per cent from 2012, and a new Labour Ministry Survey reported [in November 2013] that one in three Indian graduates is unemployed despite an increase education levels. Among all these confusing trends relating to the country’s most important resource – its human capital – is there a potential solution that has remained absent from the discussion in India: role-relevant assessments, qualifications and certification?

 The solution may begin, rather than end, with training

ManpowerGroup’s new report, Break the Crisis and Complacency Cycle, concludes that 48 per cent of Indian employers surveyed in 2012 are having difficulty filling vacant jobs, placing India seventh out of 42 countries in terms of the severity of the problem faced. And the global context is bleak too: the world’s jobless population rose by four million in 2012 to 197 million, a figure set to increase by 8.1 million by 2014. The number of low-skilled jobs in Europe is expected to fall by 12 million by 2020, whilst the number of high-skilled jobs will increase by 16 million.

With such high unemployment figures, governments around the world have been backing various schemes such as vocational training to help the people who lack the right skills or experience, and there have been positive developments in India too. The nation has recorded significant results in crucial indicators such as levels of literacy, education and health. However, according to National Service Scheme data (61st round 2004-05) only two per cent of the individuals in the labour force aged 15-29 have received formal vocational training and the National Knowledge Commission Final Report 2006-2009 indicates that eight per cent reported to have received non-formal vocational training. The Government has set itself the task of creating a skilled workforce of 500 million by 2022 and a National Skill Development Council was created under the Prime Minister’s auspices.

 

In February 2012, the Ministry for Human Resource Development (MHRD) launched the National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF) across technical colleges and institutes in areas such as IT, Media, Entertainment, Telecommunications, Mobile Communications, Automobile, Construction, Retail, Food Processing, Tourism, Hotels, Jewellery Design and Fashion Design. According to the MHRD, the NVEQF is necessary as the Indian workforce is mostly represented in the informal sector, estimated at 93 per cent. Suffering from low levels of literacy and numeracy, there was no bridge for these workers to enter the formal economy.

Testing and certification of skills is crucial

Certification is a professional badge. It offers proof of ability and aptitude, and it needs to become much more commonplace in a highly competitive global economy. Certification achieved through assessment can identify the right candidates during higher education applications, specific skill sets in a given industry, individuals best suited for vacant posts and now even the possibility of knowledge assessment by massive open online courses (MOOCs). And the availability of computer-based testing centres across India means that even those living outside cities have the opportunity to get certified.

In India many more professional organisations are developing and launching professional qualifications to address this balance.

The success story of IT certification in India is a model that could be applied to other sectors. IT certifications, for example, have long proved successful mainly because they are designed to not only assess a specific set of role-relevant skills so employers can be confident in their level of competency, but they also provide a career pathway allowing a candidate to move from junior to high-skilled with validation at every step.

Indeed, IBM's 2010 white paper found that seven out of ten IT employers felt that certification led to increase in customer service and team performance.

IT certifications also provide vital tools when hiring. The CompTIA Employer Perception of IT Training and Certification 2011 study found that almost nine out of ten hiring managers saw IT certifications as a high or medium priority in the candidate evaluation process. Whilst IT differs from other industries, the principle of validating knowledge and skills and ensuring confidence in ability is the same.

There is arguably no more important sector than healthcare, where validation of skills can mean the difference between life and death. A survey of 3,000 nurses and managers by the American Board of Nursing Specialties found that certification was highly valued not just by certified nurses but also non-certified nurses, certified managers and non-nursing managers. The driving force for certification was not salary. It was the recognition, respect and confidence in their ability from peers and crucially, patients. It is these factors which are the ultimate argument for accreditation in the workplace – dispelling the myth that if staff get certified they will leave. A growing number of employers are leveraging certifications as a way to signal their own organisation-wide competencies to customers.

Professional testing is not just about subject matter experts devising a series of questions to create a test. The combination of more assessment and certification with statistically valid tests is what will make the real impact on high-skills needs. One of the challenges globally is educating industries on the importance of psychometrics in developing a valid, reliable and fair test. If you want to be confident you’re testing a future nurse or doctor for their competency, you have to write questions in a statistically measurable way. High-stakes programmes upon which entire careers can hinge that are not statistically valid serve little or no purpose.

Time is ticking

The longer industries wait to develop the correct role-focused assessment certification programme, the more potential difficulty they will face in finding the right qualified talent. Globally, the most difficult roles to fill are in skilled trades, engineering and IT. There is a correlation between the value Europe places in certification and the fact 14 of its nations, including France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland and the UK, find it easier to fill positions compared to the global average. 

The European Commission could serve as an example for India. It is leading a multi-stakeholder partnership to tackle the lack of information and communication technology (ICT) skills in Europe. At the launch conference in June 2013 a number of organisations made pledges to help provide a Europe-wide pathway to certification.

But Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt made a powerful point about India suffering from a brain drain in a recent interview [with McKinsey & Company in December 2013], saying: “Here in Silicon Valley, there is evidence that 40 percent of the entrepreneurs are Indian foreign born. So it gives you a sense of the scale and reach of Indian entrepreneurs outside of the country. You can see the potential when the Indians come here. Imagine if they were there and they were doing the same things with the same kind of structure. They’d change the world.”

Certification should be used as a hiring tool.  It is not about simply training and certifying people for the sake of it, but tailoring training and certification to help fill specific jobs. To make sure positions are filled by the right people, and for the long-term, we need to provide more opportunities to the low skilled and those beginning their careers.

Test owners have a key role, and also an opportunity to raise standards. By growing their programmes, they can partner with employers to develop specific solutions and ongoing certification. They can also become more efficient, reducing the number of non-certified training programmes that are not industry recognised.

Computer based testing (CBT) offer numerous advantages in case of professional exams. The three most relevant to India are coverage, convenience and security. As a large country, it is essential that candidates have access to a testing location. Unlike school exams, which, for obvious practical reasons are conducted on a single day, professional assessment is far more likely to be driven by the readiness of the candidate.

Simply put, a simple valve of skill assessment and certification can help diffuse the building pressures at both ends – the rising unemployment at one, and the skills crisis at the other.

About the author

Fiona Collins, vice president of market development - Pearson VUE, holds executive sponsorship over its business in India and Certiport’s international business. Collins previously served as MD of Pearson VUE’s India business, where she was responsible for the strategy and development of transitioning paper-and-pencil clients to computer-based testing.  Among her many accomplishments, she has delivered projects with budgets as high as $5 million, including lab-based testing, the upgrade of 4,400 third-party test centers to embrace new security measures, and the development of innovative item type exams for Cisco. She has been with Pearson VUE since 2000.