Careerfit 360 believes that with the right skill set anyone can achieve greatness
Compiled by: Devika S Kartha Images: Madhav Sreekumar
Most Malayalis have glorious resumes filled with numerous degrees and ranks that would make most envious, but yet when most students step out of the college gates and into the corporate world they stand, like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming, over speeding semi-truck. Does that seem a bit over dramatic? Not at all. For the average fresher, the corporate world is a big bad world of the proverbial ‘dog eat dog’; where ‘survival of the fittest’ and the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection – where you either adapt/innovate or risk extinction or in this case, expulsion – come into play and one that they’re completely unequipped for.
With an overarching bent towards theoretical education with little or no exposure to practical know-how, this scenario has long been in the making. With 15 million youngsters entering the workforce each year, more than 75 percent are not job-ready. India will need 700 million skilled workers by 2022 to meet the demands of a growing economy. This glaring imbalance, due to lack of technical and soft skills, points towards the urgent and growing need to make young Indians job-ready, focusing on young graduates to augment their employability.
Five years ago Anuradha Subramanian and her sister-in-law Indu Jayaram decided it was time to do something to bridge the skills gap and that was how Careerfit 360 came to be. “I am an Electronic Engineer by profession. I completed my education in 2000 and I was recruited to Infosys via the campus recruitment process first as a Software Engineer and later taking up roles like project leader, quality manager and quality advisor of software projects. I have to say, I learnt a great deal about the job at Infosys, and the company itself had a really thorough training program for all its employees to ensure they know exactly what they’re doing, that they’re accountable and they hit the ground running. Whenever I came to Kerala I’d tell Indu about the empowerment and the training they do for the raw professionals who arrive straight out of college. Later I moved to Tata Elxsi and that’s when I realized that candidates from Kerala were highly educated but lacked the needed skills. They wouldn’t speak up during meetings, their communication skills were lacking, they sometimes didn’t know of basic protocol and etiquette. That’s when we decided that there was a really big gap, and there was not just a great need, but a good scope in bridging it.” says Anuradha.
Indu, an English Literature graduate by profession took up training long before Careerfit 360 came to be. Indu has fifteen experience in training life-skills coaching and career guidance. “I used to visit minimum 20 schools and corporate offices in a month conducting skills training for them. While training in companies I noticed that most youths didn’t know how to handle themselves and their emotions within an office – most of them were angry, stressed, demotivated and sometimes even depressed and fighting anxiety. It’s only when you sit down with them individually and get them talking that they open up and that they begin to vent out and feel better and in a corporate setting, no mentors have the time to be doing that with every employee. So along with skills training, we also decided to do a lot of one on one and interpersonal work with participants.” She says. Anu and Indu became certified career counsellors before they started the company.
“The vision was to empower as many people as possible irrespective of what background they are from or how highly educated they are, they need not even be working in a company. Actually, we wanted to empower people who really needed it. So other than our projects, we make it the point to go and do sessions in some outskirts and in some government schools where they don’t get these kind opportunities. Whenever we can, wherever we have the resources we try to collaborate with other people and give back to society. As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ and that was our main idea.” says Indu.
Careerfit doesn’t just put together your run of the mill soft skill, technical knowledge and awareness programs they also host unique workshops to help with communication and expression skills, motivation driving programs and even dining etiquette training for those all important Business dinners and corporate sit down luncheons. “We conducted a dining etiquette session at Crowne Plaza which featured a multiple course meal and the etiquette to be followed, the cutlery to be used. I think it’s important to know things like ‘chew with your mouth closed’ and ‘don’t speak when your mouth is full’ when you’re in the midst of a dinner meeting or a lunch with a client. After all, little things go a long way in creating a good image for oneself, and these aren’t things they teach you in school. We’ve also had a theatre methodology training for M.Tech students in a government college. The 3-day program had activities that included performance in front of audiences. It doesn’t seem important, but these exercises help boost confidence, help them not shy away from tasks like public speaking or make presentations to a room full of people or just speaking up with their ideas and opinions.” says Anuradha.
Today Careerfit 360 has provided training and imparted the necessary skill set to over 12,000 individuals with around 40 trainers on their roster and 45 clients’ across the country. For a company that was started just five years ago by two ambitious women, that’s quite an achievement. When asked about their journey as two women entrepreneurs, Anuradha and Indu say that wherever they have gone over the years, they have been well received and more importantly respected. “The world isn’t the same it used to be a few decades ago. The avenues are now opened up equally to both men and women. We’ve never faced any hardships being women in the field if anything we’ve only benefited from it.
When asked about their future plans Indu says that they are striving for greatness. “We’ve got a pretty good track record in our five years. But of course, we want to spread our wings and branch out outside Kerala across other states. It has been a dream to be one among the five top training companies so we will keep working towards that. More than making it big, what we want is to prove that if they’re given the right skill set, anybody can achieve greatness and make something of themselves irrespective of what they choose to do.”