The document discusses the Graduate Finishing School (GFS) program run by the non-profit Vidya Poshak. [1] GFS aims to equip university graduates with employability skills missing from their formal education, as only 10-15% of Indian graduates are deemed employable. It provides training in communication, time management, analytics and other skills sought by employers. [2] Over 750 students from various districts of Karnataka have graduated from GFS since 2009. Major recruiters include HP, Fidelity Investments, and banks. Many graduates find jobs in Bangalore and other cities. [3] The success and expansion of the GFS model to other locations demonstrates its

1. [Pick the date]
VIDYA POSHAK- GRADUATE
FINISHING SCHOOL
AMAL.K
amal.iirm@gmail.com

2. Are our students really employable?
Government of India boasts of an impressive improvement in the Gross Enrolment Ratio
(GER) in the last leg of the 11th five year plan. India indeed achieved a GER figure of 18.8%.
It created a huge fuss when N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chief of Infosys, commented earlier
in 2011 that only 25% of India’s graduate youth are employable. Within months, Mrs.
Prathibha Patil, then president of the Union of India, corrected the figure saying that only
15% of our boys and girls passing out of college have the skills required to become
employable. The latest shock came when Goverdhan Mehta, the chairman of the National
Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), commented earlier this year that only 10
percent of graduates are employable.
The British Council categorically stated in their 2009’s report on employability in India:
“India is facing a national skills deficit. Twelve million young people are leaving school each
year without the vocational and life skills required for basic employment.1” The British
Council’s recipe for the identified problem came in the form of “English for progress’, a
unique initiative for making a good number of college graduates employable in the thriving
BPO sector by providing them with basic working English knowledge. The government of
India has also given special emphasis to tackling the problem of employability, and efforts
have been made pan-India level. The saddest part is that many of these initiatives remain
within pockets of certain urban and semi-urban peripheries and vast geographies remain
insufficiently covered. The Northern Karnataka Sandbox region unfortunately happens to be
an area which failed to attract much of any institutionalized initiatives to scaffold the existing
college education system; hence, it fails to be injected with some of the most critical
employability skills and attitudes required by the corporate realm for hiring graduates,
especially from non-technical backgrounds.
1
British Council,2009, Citation from http://www.britishcouncil.org.in/efponline/sessions/19_3.html
2

3. VIDYA POSHAK’S GRADUATE FINISHING SCHOOL
Vidyaposhak, a non-governmental organization has been working on some of the pressing
needs facing the student community in Karnataka and Parts of Maharashtra since last 12
years. The organization has successfully helped transform lives of thousands of under-served
students by providing financial assistance to the students to pursue higher education. As the
organization worked with students over a decade of time, Vidyaposhak identified the failure
of the present day educational system in equipping the students with the critical
employability skills that the job market ask for. This identification led to a offering a solution
to in the form of Graduate finishing school.
Prof. Raghavendra Tilkot, founding member and CEO of Vidya Poshak, remembers the
initial thoughts of the core team and the earlier days of
initiating GSF.
“Only close to 18 percent of the students in the ages of 18-23
opt for higher education - beyond 10+2 - in India...the most
worrying factor here is the quality of education...the university
education system clearly failed to meet the quality
requirements of the contemporary industry, economy and the
general society they live in. So there is a huge gap...this is a
well known fact and Vidya Poshak wanted to do the little
which we can to address the issue. Out of the vast periphery of
Prof. R.N.Tilkot, Founder,
CEO, Vidya Poshak problems, we identified one element to work and that was
imparting skills required to fetch a job in the larger job market.”
“Thanks to Deshpande Foundation, they send Sheela, an Indi-Global Fellow from USA to
work with us. She worked with our team for two years, and she along with the team members
visited not less than 20 companies and took extensive information regarding the
employability skills they were looking for - to be specific, for the service sector entry level
jobs. We realized that it is the service sector industries that absorb large chunk of the
graduates from non-technical backgrounds and we, after considering the inputs received from
the industry, framed a curriculum after 6 months of works and in 2007 we launched Graduate
Finishing School...We may not be bringing in the excellence, but [we are] bridging the gap
very successfully.”
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4. Prof. Tilkot had a clear view of the kind of training to be given for a fresh university
graduate: “Teaching any skills is not paramount. The students comes from the typical
university system and they need to be brought out of the university mindset...The biggest
thing we do with the students is that we break the time barrier. Once you tune someone to
work happily for 10 hours a day, our work is done...The first 15 days of the program is the
most important period in programs like GFS. We should demonstrate what we expect and
demand the same back from the students...”
(See annexure 2 for the daily schedule at GSF)
Sanjay Vaidya, finance manager of Sankalp Semi Conductors, an ex-employee of Vidya
Poshak, agrees with this: “The biggest thing that GFS had done is that they broke the time
barrier for the students. They taught them not to look at their watch, and that is a big
attitudinal change.”
Graduate Finishing School, as a scaffolding institution, helps add that extra skill and
attitudinal elements into students which differentiates an employable and non-employable
candidate. As stated by Prof. Tilkot, the key elements like breaking the time barrier and
putting the spirit within the students to go the extra mile actually help students hailing from
some of the most underserved regions of the state of Karnataka to excel in the highly
competitive work environment in some of the big names in the market.
Mary Cathrine Sandhya from Raichur went Basappa Guli from Goswar, Belgaum
on to do her Masters in Business district, testifies that he could not have
Management after working with Hewlett had been able to get a job in Bangalore
Packard in Bangalore for 14 months. like the one which is currently fetching
Thomas, her proud father said: “My daughter him a 5-digit salary right after graduation
got a job in HP Company in Bangalore right lest he had joined GFS. A pass out of the
after doing her course in Vidya Poshak in 2011-12 batch from Dharwad centre, he is
Gulbarga. Now she is pursuing her higher the lone graduate from his family of finve.
studies in Management with Human Both his father and younger brother are
Resource as her specialization. She was farmers and his elder sister got married.
getting Rs. 1.8 Lakh per annum, and she said Basappa is confident of climbing up in the
she will get an even better job in HP itself career ladder after 10 months of corporate
once she completes her masters.” experience in Indocom Global.
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5. Many students who had joined corporations right after the course stayed with their recruiters
for more than two years. The 15 odd repeated Multi National Corporations recruiting
repetitively from testify that the students add value to the organizations, and in most cases
GFS gets a higher number of recruits through alumni reference rather than by any other
means.
Table 1: Number of GFS students by district:
DISTRICT 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012 TOTAL
Bagalkot 14 36 24 74
Bangalore 0 2 0 2
Belgaum 47 64 57 168
Bellary 0 6 6 12
Bidar 4 4 5 13
Bijapur 20 22 11 53
Chamraj Nagar 0 1 1 2
Chikmangalore 1 0 14 15
Davangare 0 1 7 8
Dharwad 29 31 25 85
Gadag 7 5 13 25
Gulbarga 40 19 32 91
Hasan 0 1 1 2
Haveri 12 11 28 51
Karwar 1 5 12 18
Koppal 1 2 5 8
Mahboobnagar 1 1 2
Mandya 0 1 2 3
Mysore 0 4 22 26
Raichur 5 15 10 30
Shimoga 2 3 4 9
Udupi 0 1 0 1
Uttara Karnataka 14 17 26 57
Yadgir 0 0 1 1
TOTAL 199 252 306 757
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6. Diagram 1: Number of GFS students by district
Distribution of Students
From Districts
other than
N.Karnataka
9%
From From SB
N.Karnataka 51%
Outside SB
districts
40%
*SB-Sand Box districts- Dharwad, Belgaum, Gadag, Haveri and Uttar Kannada
Highest number of students has joined from districts like Belgaum, Gulbarga, Haveri, Bijapur
Bagalkot and Uttar Kannada. Students from these districts had been largely successful in
getting placed in reputed MNC like Hewlett Packard, Fidelity Investments, Tech Mahindra,
etting MNC’s ,
and JP Morgan, in positions for which they mostly competed with candidates from the
Metros and other states. a good number of placements are happening in cities like Pine and
Chennai also.
“Students from the villages and underserved backgrounds have more serious reasons to stick
with an employer for longer periods. They are in a dire need for employability, unlike an
average Bangalorean for whom a job is more of a choice than a serious necessity. This is the
choice
reason why students from this region tend to work hard, and because most of them have
commitments and responsibilities to shoulder they tend to stay longer with their employers.”
Sanjay Vaidya, who handled placements for more than three years in Vidya Poshak, added.
, placements
One big thing that the recruiters look for apart from the skill levels in their recruits is the
tenure that one stays with the company for. In the KPO/BPO sector, where the HR managers
find it extremely difficult to maintain the required number of employees at any given point,
programs like GFS come in very handy. “Recruits from Vidya Poshak tend to stay for longer
periods and that is one of the most important reasons why we hire from them regularly,” an
HR associate from HP Bangalore iterates.
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7. Nitin Desai, regional head, Agastya International Foundation, feels that “Vidya Poshak is an
ideal place for us to hire fellows. Our earlier hiring has been quite satisfactory and most of
them are still with us. They understand the culture and contribute well in the organization.
We hired Srishail two years before and he is one of the best trainers I have. This year we
wish to hire three more from GSF.”
Indeed, GFS is also a spot for recruiters from the North Karnataka region to pick some
market-ready employees quickly.
BRANCHING OUT STRATEGY
A man with a clear vision, Prof. Tilkot is very sure about the future of his program. “An
NGO should not hang on to a project for hundreds of years. They should partner with others,
develop and model through a pilot, build the model and once they evolve a successful model,
they should start sharing it with others. Since the NGOs do not work like business
enterprises, their intention is the benefit of a large number of people...There should be
hundreds of colleges running GFSs. By that time Vidya Poshak should be working on some
other pilot to branch out,” he said.
National Educational Society, Shimoga, and Swami Vivekananda Girijana Sahaya Samiti,
Mysore, are two organizations which had currently partnered with Vidya Poshak to run GFS
in their own premises. The branching out strategy, where Vidya Poshak transfers the
technology and facilitate setup of GFS centres at locations outside Dharwad, has helped the
program reach out to more number of students Year on Year (YOY). From 2010-11 to 2011-
12, YOY growth has been an impressive 19.3% and 32.1% respectively. The best part of the
branching out strategy has been that the new centres also managed attract some of the best
companies as recruiters that have traditionally been recruiting from the mother centre at
Dharwad and maintained the tradition of placing 100% of the students.
“There is a good amount of exchange between the three centres and we from the Dharward
centre visit other centres at regular intervals. There has been a good amount of handholding
in the beginning and we make sure the new centres reach the level of operating their own.
They maintain the same quality that we have here and that’s why they are able to maintain
almost the same level of placements as we have in Dharwad,” Anand Rao, Director, Vidya
Poshak, added.
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8. Diagram 2: Number of Students Graduated
Students Graduated
600
531
500
400 402
337
300
Students Graduated
200
100
0
09-10 10-11
11 11-12
The unique distinction that differentiates GFS from other similar initiatives is the scale it
managed to achieve over the years. The program successfully penetrated in the North, West
and South Karnataka through meaningful partnerships. The
NOT ONLY ENGLISH AND COMPUTERS
SH
One of the key distinguishing factors of GFS has been that the program imparts skills beyond
the basic BPO/KPO skills. “We have kept a good amount of time on analytics training which
help students clear the elimination test in the first pl
place,” says Anand Rao. The result is
ays Rao
obvious – More than 60% of the students get placed in reputed MNCs. Analytics training the
.
students receive help them clear elimination tests. Students also feel the training they receive
in analytics - which is basically a preparatory training for quantitative aptitude, data analysis,
basically aptitude
and analytical reasoning - have indeed helped them to clear competitive exams as well as
elimination tests. Prof. Tilkot is very sure about this as he said: “Our products may not be
“Our
unique, but we ensure that the process is unique and keep on evolving.”
Sector-wise breakup of the recruiters gives testimony for this. Even though the BPO&KPOs
hire 68% of the total graduates, share of other sectors is also worth mentioning. Private sector
banks like ICICI and HDFC recruited more number of students in the most recent batches,
increasing the number of non BPO recruiters.
8

9. (See annexure1 for detailed course content and list of recruiters)
Travel and
logistics
Sectoral break up of recruitment 2009-12
recruitment- 2009
2% Higher Education
Others Retail
Government Internet 3% Tech 2%
1%
Service/ Administration
Sales/Marketing
Service NGO
Projects provider 1% 0%
0% 3% Banks
1%
4%
Financial Service
15%
Education BPO and KPO
Institution 68%
0%
Basavaraj Pawadi from Uttar Kannada opted not to have a corporate
career. But the analytics and competitive examination training given
during the course helped him get a job in the postal department. “My life
is settled now. I got posted in my home district itself and my parents are
really happy...I can attend departmental examinations and get a
promotion in the next two years.” Having a central government job at an
early age of 22, there is every reason for his parents to be happy with their
son.
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10. NEED FOR GOING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
With more organizations entering the skilling space, the point of differentiation will be the
ability to adapt and respond positively to the ever changing requirements of the job market.
The swiftness in adaptability will very much be reflected in the number and quality of
placements one could make. Thus the need of the hour for any organization is to strive for
excellence in their respective niche by setting higher standards for oneself. A system of
collecting continuous feedback - both from the recruiters and from the alumni - is something
which will help the organization look into itself. A similar system has the prospects of
helping the organization get updated about the real requirements in the market as well as the
current status of their students. Such a system has the potential to make the relationship
between the organization, recruiter. and alumni even stronger. Over time, this initiative has
the potential to become another profit centre for the organization, since the organization will
have a rich database of human resources having varying levels of experience and this can
even help the organization build its muscles as a strong recruitment facilitator.
ALUMNI LINKS
GFS has an informal system of getting feedback from alumni, organizing annual events
where the alumni are invited to join. It is felt that the organization has yet to put serious
efforts into building a strong alumni network and institutionalizing it. Many of those who
passed last year or earlier never bothered to contact the institute back.
Mallikarjun Bhijagmer from Bijapur district, a 2010-11 batch graduate who is
presently working in HP as a process associate, is drawing two lakh per annum. He is
happy to have got the job and gives full credit for the fine opening hegot to GFS. When
asked about possible improvements he said: “We had certain sessions cancelled during
our time since trainers didn’t turn up. I don’t remember anything other than that. The
quality of classes we received was really good, but I still feel the students will benefit
more if Vidya Poshak could conduct more number of interactive sessions with people
who are already working in companies.”
Satish Jigajinni from Belgaum, currently working with Ageis BPO, feels the training
was really useful and shared the same opinion with regards to corporate interaction.
Satish is drawing Rs. 1.8 lakh per annum and recently completed 17 months with his
first employer.
10

11. WAY AHEAD
Started as an answer to the problem of unemployment among youth, GFS has successfully
helped more than 1500 students get decent jobs with decent initial pay packages. The
program is constantly changing and in tune with the vision of the founders Vidya Poshak is
ever striving to solve some of the pressing needs of the student communities. As an ever
evolving model GFS is reinventing itself batch after batch, which it must do so to branch out
to more geographies. It is encouraging to see that certain colleges have come forward to
accept the program as an addition to their regular curriculum. This will indeed help reach out
to multiples of the numbers it could reach over the years in shorter periods. However, this
puts an extra onus on Vidya Poshak to maintain the quality and intensity of the program.
As Anand Rao iterated, “we are continuously striving for improving our systems and keeping
ourselves relevant and updated.” He seems to be hitting the bull’s eye - the craving for
excellence is probably the only answer for the success of an organization working in the
domain of education.
CONCLUSION
The model that Vidya Poshak has come up with for tackling the problem of the lack of
employability among rural youth reiterates the larger role that non-formal organizations
working outside the purview of the university education system can play in finding solutions
for some of the most critical problems in the sector. Being outside the purview of the
university system enables GFS to experiment, invent, and reinvent their course contents and
delivery mechanisms with larger freedom. The entire course had been crafted around a social
business model, having strong elements of financial sustainability along with the stated
objective of making rural youth employable. Vidya Poshak as an organization has exhibited
traits of a learning organization2 throughout its history of evolution; GFS has its genesis in
this tradition of the organization has exhibited traits of a learning organization3 throughout
its history of evolution; GFS has its genesis in this tradition of the organization. Being a front
runner in identifying some of the critical needs and solutions for the problem identified in the
Sandbox region, Vidya Poshak has a more serious role to play by ‘piloting models’ and
2
This is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms
itself.
11

12. ‘branching out’.
ANNEXURE 1:
Course Syllabus- Graduate Finishing School:
A. Functional English:
B. Basic Computer Training:
C. Personality Development:
12

13. D. Analytical Skills:
E. Core Competency Enhancement:
Annexure 2:
A day at Graduate Finishing School:
13

14. Annexure 3: List of repeated recruiters:
ACCENTURE HDFC BANK
CMS COMPUTERS MUTHOOT FINCORP
I-GATE
HINDUJA GLOBAL
INDIA INFOLINE
E4E
TATA CMC
MPHASIS
TCS
E&Y WIPRO
FIDELITY JP MORGAN
FIRST AMERICAN
HEWLETT PACKARD
BOSCH
IBM
VISION NET
FIRST SOURCE
FIDELITY
ICICI BANK INFOSYS
TECH MAHINDRA
14