In conversation with Om Narayan, Head- Enterprise Business Solutions and Academia Relations, Mytat
How is Mytat aiming to contribute to workforce transformation in rural India? Have you started any initiatives?
India has very vast and diverse geography as well as population. India presented some of the world’s best education initiatives and outputs, however, resource crunch and accessibility to the training/ workforce transformation resources are still the major issues. To add, scarcity of credible internship opportunities even after being mandated by relevant bodies like MoHRD, NSDC, MoRD, MoUD, and bodies like AICTE, DGT, NSDC, poses a big challenge in the career path of youths. A huge struggle to gain applied knowledge for students has been observed. The issue of students failing to secure a job even after campus selections or internships led to the genesis of thought to build Mytat back in 2015. Mytat has been in beta use for the past 2-3 years and so far, has reached out to 50,000 candidates across India and helped placed over 1700 students. Recently, we have signed partnerships in Rajasthan with various higher education institutions and will be reaching out to 50,000 candidates in the next one year.
MYTAT has been developed to help students to identify their skill gaps, practice employability related assessments as per industry standards and join live and current theme/technology / problem-based projects that are mentored by industry experienced professionals with a pre and post skill assessment process.
We followed this approach for helping students in the rural rungs of the country earlier however, as the same problem is observed with candidates in urban cities as well, we are reaching out to students across demographics at one go.
How technology can help revive the traditional skill assessment/ SWOT analysis for students?
Traditional assessments were limited to a set of aptitude, functional tests or personality assessment and with a very limited fresher intake. With technological advancement, organizations have started focusing on a 360-degree talent assessment approach, thus, witnessing a shift in the recruitment/ talent acquisition process. A candidate is now being tested basis a series of assessments that are an amalgamation of aptitude, psychometric, coding/technical/non-technical, soft skills, MCQs, Subjective, simulation-based or hackathons, communication skill test– audio, and written etc. Employers use these assessments to take a view on each candidature to determine their long association and success potential in that role.
With technology disrupting the traditional assessments methods, students can benefit not only from skill acquisition initiatives but would also receive insight into their competitiveness in the talent market. This understanding helps him/her make an informed career decision.
How technology can be used to enhance the employability of students, making the platform accessible and scalable across India?
We all are aware that organizations are concentrated in limited cities and so are the professionals. It is impossible to burden organizations to enable students with credible project exposure. Therefore – it is now a necessity to ensure that such opportunities are accessible online during their education or training period, under a professional mentor.
With repetitive project exposure students not only get familiarised with technology but also acclimatise themselves to the process of problem-solving, teamwork and interpersonal relations. Therefore, it is a complete transitional experience for them while they are still on campus.
Technological learning and skill assessment platforms are the way forward. With low-cost data packages, basic laptop and mobile phones. Simple device agnostics, platforms are putting efforts to become scalable while providing easy access to students even in the rural rungs of India.
What are some of the USPs of Mytat and Lrnable vis-a-vis benefits to users?
Mytat has been in a unique position playing a critical role of connecting academia, students and industry. MYTAT’s robust AI/ML-powered assessment engine is being used by the top employer brands across the country.
Our assessment platforms help students to understand their employability and skill gaps. Students can further benefit from the self-paced and gamified learning backed by the inbuilt assessments to gauge their progress. The platform provides access to unlimited practice assessments with unique features of tracking previous scores, mistakes and practising further. These are necessary to acquire the desired technical, soft and new-age skills which are a pre-requisite to be job-ready nowadays. Students on the Mytat platform can also take the advantage of getting connected to the industry through internships or working on projects and learn real-time.
For educational institutions, MYTAT can help, gamify their curriculum and learning assessments. This will help raise students’ performance in the same class; section topic may be used for FDP delayering insights and growth. Mytat will also ease the struggle to facilitate credible internship and placements for these institutions.
On the other hand, corporates will get students who would understand processes and technologies, complementing them with good interpersonal skills and therefore presenting a better human resource tapping/retention opportunity which would indirectly save cost hiring and training cost, adding to the corporates’ overall profitability.
Once a candidate gets hired, Lrnable will further use the insights of MYTAT hiring assessments as development initiative input, facilitating timely learning interventions workshops while gauging the effectiveness of programs and continue to support employees at each career stage.
Thus, organisations with a handy skill matrix can take important business decisions at any given time.
