Incorporating G.I.E With Soft Skills For Stimulating Employability In Engineering Students Of AMU

Corporate sector has witnessed a drastic change in the last few decades around the world and India is no exception to it. Ever since the proliferation of globalization inter-state businesses have grown up like never before. Consequently, multinational companies are gradually taking over the local businesses which created a paradigm shift in the recruitment processes of companies to meet the demands of the job market. Earlier, people used to get recruited merely on the basis of their job specific skills called as Hard Skills. Today, employers seek two exclusive skills besides hard skills. (i) Soft skills such as communication skill, adaptability, decision making, time management, team work, leadership, etc., and (ii) Oral skills in English like intelligibility and fluency in spoken English, as it serves as lingua franca, i.e. a common language of communication among the people of different regional and linguistic backgrounds employees need . Thus, young job aspirants who can speak fluently and intelligibly in English and possess soft skills get an edge not only during the recruitment but also during the job.
In the above discussed context, this paper attempts to find out if the teaching General Indian English and soft skills help graduates and young job aspirants stimulate employability? To test the same an activity based study was conducted with a group of 40 undergraduate students of engineering faculty. The activities were conducted in 5 phases to observe if the training of some select soft skills like team work, decision making, communication skills, and workplace etiquette actually stimulates those skills in the students? The researcher observed positive changes in the attitude and the confidence of the students after they undergo soft skills, activities as well as spoken English lessons in General Indian English multiple times. Thus, this study suggests the integration of a paper on GIE and soft skills across all disciplines at undergraduate level.