The unemployed, at times, do not really want a job

TV and the Internet came and gradually started making a mark on the world. But Newspapers did not kneel back and continued reaching more and more readers. Well, if you read newspapers you can vouch that there are some buzzwords that you come across frequently. Corruption, terrorism, politics, Modi, government. Employment or rather unemployment is also one of those frequent buzzwords. Is unemployment really that big a problem or are the newspapers exaggerating it? Let's have a look at it from a different point of view.

According to aspiring minds National Employability report which is based on a study of more than 1,50,000 engineering students who graduated in 2015 from over 650 colleges, 80% of them is unemployable. Unemployability occurs when a person who is actively searching for employment is unable to find work. This is the definition of unemployability that the internet told me. I think the definition is incomplete. Let me try to redefine and complete it to the best of my skills. According to me, Unemployability occurs when a person who has a computer science degree (or another degree) is actively searching for an employment in IT sector (or that sector) while he doesn’t care about or know programming is unable to find work. Consciously or subconsciously(start paying attention) the unemployed at times do not want a job.

I have a good and a bad news. There always are jobs. There isn’t always a job that you want. We may not have necessary skills for the job that we want (and that’s ok, not everyone knows everything) but some of us still want that job (that's not ok). I won't sound very intelligent if I say maybe that's why we are unemployable. Nobody can get more than the efforts they put in. Want a dream job? Work hard or let it be a dream. I was in the second year of my college. My teacher informed us that Infosys needs 30 thousand engineers that they are unable to find. He meant to say that they are lots of jobs all we need to do is get employable. It was motivating and getting employable was all in our own hands. But gradually the motivation died and no one from that class is in Infosys today. Why did the motivation die? Simply because getting employable for Infosys required skills which nobody wanted to do out of passion. I could have but I never wanted to be in Infosys (Infosys may be an awesome company, but it was not the mountain that I wanted to climb).

It doesn’t matter much what degree you take. The world today is a skills world. The private sector is picky. Indian students "spend a lot of time on their degrees and ultimately realize that these degrees are not going to provide a passport into the private sector jobs," says Prof Jeffrey, professor of development geography at Oxford University, an expert on India's unemployed youth.Young people waiting for opportunities that never arrive have been dubbed by Prof Jeffrey as the "time pass" generation. He describes a generation of bored young graduates, marking time and detached from the world. "Waiting has become a profession for these young people," he said. "Their parents are on their backs wanting them to get a job. But they don't have the English language skills or knowledge and confidence to be able to compete for the small number of, for example, IT sector jobs, that are emerging in India." Your degree should elevate you not bring you down. The degree should not make you one dimensional. You should not think that I have this degree so I should do this job. You need to play on your strength. The predefined notion , the dogma that If you have a CS degree, you need to get a CS job needs to be broken down. If your degree is your skill, go for it. You will have a job, no doubt. But maybe you are good at writing, then you should write. Can you sing? Use your CS degree knowledge (see, knowledge gets used somewhere) and write a song on why both turing and turing machine are awesome. Don’t let your degree be a barrier. Rise above your degree.

Let me tell you a surprising statistics. According to labor Bureau “Third Annual Employment and unemployment survey 2012-2013” unemployment rate amongst illiterate youth is lower than educated youth. So, if you are illiterate and don’t have a degree, you are more likely to get a job. The statistic is telling a tale. Let us listen.

Sit down. Take a deep breath. Look inside and find where you currently stand. What skills do you have? Which of your skills pay more? How can you make your passion your job? Now, stand up. Get to work. May you get the job that can ornament your skills. And If you are in college (lucky you), build skills. When I say build skills you don’t need to pick guitar because everybody is doing it. Ask yourself? What you like yourself then build that skills. Don’t think the CS degree is a gateway to jobs and don’t expect your college to place you . William Ernest Henley said in his poem Invictus ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.‘ Remember that. Everybody has skills, we need to identify and play on them.

If you are in and around Jaipur or jodhpur. We have a playground ready. A playground to hone your skills. I work at Qriyo. We provide courses to customers at their home. Can you teach music or dance? Are you good at academics? Whether you are a busy person or a carefree student, you can take out an hour a day and teach. When you teach, you learn and earn. If you don’t want to teach maybe you need to learn something. Wake up, let us starts working.