Marks

Quantum of the marks you scored reflect your willingness to work hard.

Efforts majorly matters because, efforts only can turn an idea or raw material in to a product.

Certifications

To put the story short, certificates elevate chances of getting interview calls.   

Certificate is one way of indicating the depth and overall knowledge of particular competency.

Generally, institutions and students do not have orientation of achieving certifications (in the goal area) during academics itself. 

If students are sparing little time in parallel to academics to understand the pattern of certifications, it is a feasible task to achieve certification along with academics

Non-functional requirements

No product can be called complete without meeting non-functional requirements like Performance, Security, Accessibility, Supportability, etc. 

At academic, this may not be given focus and may not be covered also.

But in the industry, non-functional area becomes on one of the EXIT CRITERIA for release.

Tool Usage Index  (SMART WORK) - Usage of Open source tools

One of the common words heard in the industry is smart work.

To ensure productivity, and to control quality and cost, industry enforces to explore and adopt applicable tools for the entire cycle of product development  and product support.

Matured systems follow a critical metric called Tool Usage Index for the whole development cycle and mandates a minimum index say 70%.

In academics, the exposure to commonly used tools may not be provided and students when get into real time projects struggle to scale to the new environment of tools.

There are many open source tools easy to use from first year itself. For example, Wireshark tool which monitors the network traffic is easy to install but gives exposure to network protocols.

Teaching

Though marks indicate one level of expertise in the given subject, it may not assure the conceptual hold  and end to end perspective of the subject.

Conceptual understanding of the subject is essential to apply the subject for solutioning.

Any subject should start with Why, what are the pain areas being addressed by introduction of this subject.

Conceptual understanding of the subject can be assessed if student is able to present the subject with his peers or juniors.

Sometimes, knowledge will be in dots and connection of these dots will be needed to be able to stand on the dais and speak up.

It can help in real testimonial of depth of the knowledge. 

Hence proposing students to teach a subject for 20 hours to check the width and depth.

This will also help in assessing the most critical factor for employability Expressiveness, ability to respond to un-expected queries, etc.

Technology Hours

The ultimate goal of education, in the long run, should be solutioning.

Academics will set the context of subject, but students should be exposed to how this subject is applied to solutioning and latest trends in those subjects.

This can be achieved by reading weekly/monthly/quarterly magazines in the given domain/technology.

This will also help to understand the subject better in terms of concepts and design.

Suggesting students to spend one hour per week on magazine reading to raise the exposure and confidence also.

Guided Path - Goal setting and monitoring:

Most of the students have ambition to get selected in the campus. Whereas few students will have a comprehensive goal with specifics to domain, technology, company, salary levels, etc. Students may not have orientation to take stretch goals to challenge their potential continuously.

Lack of Guidance: This may be because they have not mandated to work under a Guide/Mentor for whole engineering period. Even in the cases of stretch goals taken, effective modes of monitoring may be missing. It was observed that students who made it practice sending weekly report have smoothly succeeded in achieving their goals.

Few parameters like Category, title of task, Priority, Target Date, Revised Target date, Risk of Failure, Status gave good exposure to project management principles and efficiency, in achieving goals in predictable manner.

Innovation / Concept Note

World has reached to this stage of comfort because of passion and hard work by many passionate individuals for generations.
Their inventions have helped to the standard of living and pleasure of life of mankind. 

Next to invention, Innovation plays role to bring in efficiency in the systems.

Two key factors (finance terms) of industry are top line and bottom line (more business and better profits).

In this context, it is important to realize the basic and simplest definition of efficiency. “More with less” Delivery more with less resources and time.

For achieving this, orientation of continuous thought process is needed to explore all feasible areas.

This may not be orientation at student level. But when challenged, students can raise their thoughts to come up with solutions. 

Most of the students may not transforming an idea to products.

Most of the students may not know a term called concept note to present the problem, impact, various feasible solutions and the better solution proposed.

Internships: Outcome - Faster onboarding to customer projects

Industry is the place where needs of customer and perspective of customer’s customer to be understood and addressed in less time, less cost, better quality, and better usability. 

Industry also stands for an important definition like Integrating the  potential. Execution methodologies (Project Management, RAID…., ) best practices, etc. Internship will help student to become productive faster and faster onboarding to customer projects

Mini Projects / PoCs

Every subject may be a champions on its own in silos, unless integrated for an end to end solution.

Project work is the place where various academics/subjects are brought together to offer a product which can give value addition to customers.

Presentations in Tech. events – Sharp the competency and confidence

This is the third level of maturing the competency.

Learning academics, teaching, and then presenting in technical events.

This will sharpen the learning as time given will be less and expectations will be high.

Facing audience beyond the homogeneous environment and questions will raise the competency and boosts the confidence.

Life is a continuous Analysis

The next stage of competency is to apply it to solve the problems and introduce new solutions.

Ability to analyse the situation plays the role here. This is matter of orientation, exposure to various situations to identify appropriate technology to provide solution. If applied to the industry, understanding the customer perspective is especially important.

Say whether it is requirement gathering, a problem raised by customer, understanding customer environment issues, configuration issues, etc., all matter of ability to analyse.  

Recruiters only want those on their team who are quick on their feet and have problem solving abilities.

This cannot be taught in classrooms; this can only be attained through practice.

Expressiveness /  Communication

In this google era, one of the critical elements of employability is expressiveness, the ability to express the expertise and achievements.

This is matter of exposure and practice only.

Many students may not know the 360 spectrum of communication/presentation, that it lies in four areas Listening, Reading, Writing and speaking.

Beauty of this area is that it would raise the confidence of the student to move forward.

 Workshops and seminars attended

Attending workshops and seminars extends the exposure to domains, technologies, and advancements.

It gives picture on how others are implementing the technology and solutioning.

It also helps in extending network and connections. Meeting new people may act as a catalyst in personality development of students.

Self and mock interviews  (Preparation for Exam vs Interview) (Questions and script readiness)

If we compare the ratio of, Outcome vs self-potential in the interview, in most of the cases it is generally low. Compare the preparation for exam vs interview. For exam, there are lots of questions listed and preparation goes till the last moment.
How many students are ready with probable questions for the interview?
How many students have script ready for the questions identified?
How many students practice interview questions in mock mode?

We haven’t reached to handle an interview like a timebound exam.
This is leading to  “transmission loss of potential” in the interview.
Identifying at least 25 questions, making script ready for each question (around 10 sentences),  doing 5 self-interviews and 5 mock interviews will raise the probability of success in the interview.  
Mock interviews help a candidate prepare for the worst. 
It helps them reduce their anxiety and also gives them a fair view of possible obstacles during an interview.  
Constructive feedback after the interview provides the candidate with certain points to practice and master.
This way, the candidate can overcome any apprehension that he may have.

Extra-curricular activities

Volunteering and managing programs scale-up attributes of hard working, servicing, teamwork, which will help higher productivity at workplace.

It also stands symbolic of a candidate’s wholesome development throughout his graduation.