In this competitive world engineering graduates are expected to be highly resourceful for employability. The present day employers give more emphasis to the employability skills of the potential engineers. There are several discussions and studies on “What types of skills and abilities are needed in the workplace?” This study attempts to explore the employability skills needed for the engineers to sustain in this global job market. This paper also puts forward the list of skills needed by the engineering graduates. On the whole, this paper suggests that the engineering graduates should acquire and demonstrate a set of generic skills such as communication skills, problem solving skills and interpersonal skills.

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International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology (IJCIET)
Volume 10, Issue 01, January 2019, pp. 1074–1080, Article ID: IJCIET_10_01_099
Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/ijciet/issues.asp?JType=IJCIET&VType=10&IType=1
ISSN Print: 0976-6308 and ISSN Online: 0976-6316
©IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed
SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS FOR
CIVIL AND OTHER ENGINEERING
PROFESSIONALS IN THE GLOBAL MARKET
K. Sunthara Valli
Research scholar (PhD in English), Department of English,
School of Social Sciences & Languages
VIT, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India
Dr. N.S. Vishnu Priya
Assistant Professor (Sr.), Department of English,
School of Social Sciences & Languages
VIT, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India
ABSTRACT
In this competitive world engineering graduates are expected to be highly
resourceful for employability. The present day employers give more emphasis to the
employability skills of the potential engineers. There are several discussions and
studies on “What types of skills and abilities are needed in the workplace?” This study
attempts to explore the employability skills needed for the engineers to sustain in this
global job market. This paper also puts forward the list of skills needed by the
engineering graduates. On the whole, this paper suggests that the engineering
graduates should acquire and demonstrate a set of generic skills such as
communication skills, problem solving skills and interpersonal skills.
Key words: Engineering graduates, employability skills, soft skills
Cite this Article: K. Sunthara Valli, Dr. N.S. Vishnu Priya, Sustainable Employability
Skills for Civil and Other Engineering Professionals in the Global Market,
International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology (IJCIET) 10(1), 2019, pp.
1074–1080.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJCIET/issues.asp?JType=IJCIET&VType=10&IType=1
1. INTRODUCTION
„To be employed is to be at risk, to be employable is to be secure‟
-The Art of Building Windmills, Peter Hawkins (1999)
Globally Indian higher education system occupies the place after China and the United States.
Technical Education aims at equipping a man for work in the practical sense of making him
fit for a job. In India, the number of graduates coming out of engineering colleges is

2. K. Sunthara Valli, Dr. N.S. Vishnu Priya
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increasing day by day. But all of them are not employed, the reason is that they lack certain
skills called employability skills. The success of engineering graduates getting placed in
reputed companies is based on their employability skills.
Bianca K.& Peter F. (2004) defined engineering as: „Engineering is a profession directed
towards the skilled application of a distinctive body of knowledge based on mathematics,
science and technology, integrated with business and management, which is acquired through
education and professional formation in a particular engineering discipline. Engineering is
directed to developing, providing and maintaining infrastructure, goods and services for
industry and the community.‟ Therefore engineering graduates are expected to have certain
skills to apply and improve their knowledge in workplace which are commonly called
„Employability skills‟. Robinson (2000) defined employability skills as “those basic skills
necessary for getting, keeping, and doing well on a job.” Others described employability skills
as „the skills that can be teachable‟ (Lorraine, 2007) and „transferable‟ (Yorke, 2006).
Engineering graduates are required to possess the employability skills to help them
practise their knowledge and technical skills effectively. There are many guidelines for
developing the employability skills that have been brought out by the institution of higher
learning. However, rapid changes occurring in the world need the framework to be updated as
needed in the workplace.
The objective of this paper is to explore the set of skills required for sustaining the
employability of engineering graduates. Most of the engineering colleges have students from
different backgrounds coming from different places. Not everyone speak the same language.
Hence, there is a need to provide a common platform to make them competent enough to face
the challenges in this competitive world. Here, as English is the official language we can
improve their employability skills through English.
Employability skills are very essential to get into and survive in this competitive world.
Engineering employability skills, also known as generic skills are highly related to non-
technical skills. They are sometimes referred to the generic capabilities, transferable skills,
basic skills, essential skills, work skills, soft skills, core skills, core competencies and
enabling skills or even key skills (DEST 2007; Yorke, 2006; Knight, P. and Yorke, M., 2002;
Hiroyuki, 2004).These skills also known as soft skills are given the utmost importance during
the campus interviews. This paper aims to list out the employability skills that are important
to an engineering graduate to get employed in reputed companies and perform well in the
workplace. The following is the table listing out the employability skills of engineering
graduates developed by the ministry of higher education.

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Table 1 Engineering Employability Skills developed by Ministry of Higher Education
Sources: “The Future of Engineering Education In Malaysia”(2007); EAC Manual (2003); ABET,
USA(1998)
There are seven soft skills otherwise known as Employability skills that should be
incorporated in the syllabus of the engineering students. In other words, academic education
and soft skills training should go hand- hand. The following are the seven soft skills.
2. SOFT SKILLS
i) Communication skills
ii) Leadership skills
iii) Team work
iv) Critical thinking and Problem Solving skills Ethics
v) Entrepreneurship skills
vi) Life-Long Learning & Information Management Skills
vii) Moral & Professional skills
We shall have a brief summary of the soft skills. When we talk about the first soft skill
Communication skill the following are to be taken into account.
 Ability to deliver idea clearly, effectively and confidently
 Ability to practice active listening skill and respond to others
 Ability to present the topic clearly and confidently
 Ability to use technology in presentations
No. Skills Description
1 Communication effectively
The ability to present ideas with confident and effective through
aural, oral and written modes, not only with engineers but also
with the community at large
2 Competent in application and
Practice
the ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering
tools
3 Interpersonal or team
workingSkills
the ability to function effectively as an individual and in a group
with the capacity to be a leader or manager as well as an effective
team member
4 Engineering problem solving
and decision making skills
the ability to undertake problem identification, apply problem
solving , formulation and solutions
5 Apply knowledge of science
and engineering principles
the ability to acquire and apply knowledge of engineering
fundamentals
6 Competence in specific
engineering discipline
the ability to acquire in-depth technical competence in a specific
engineering discipline
7 Understand professional ,
social and ethical responsibilities
the ability to understand the social , cultural, global and
environmental responsibilities of a professional engineer, and
commitment to professional and ethical responsibilities
8 Lifelong learning
the ability to recognize the need to undertake life long learning,
and possessing / acquiring the capacity to do so
9 Engineering system approach tool
the ability to utilize a systematic approach to design and evaluate
operational performance
10 Knowledge of contemporary
Issues
The ability to continue learning independently in the acquisition of
new knowledge, skills and technologies. Nowadays, the use of
information, communication and computing technologies are very
essential in the knowledge-based era.
11. Entrepreneurial Skills Having basic entrepreneurial skills

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 Ability to arrive at a state of harmony while facing a problem
 Ability to communicate with the students from different cultural background
 Ability to expand own communicative skills in difficult situations
The next important employability skill is the Leadership skill. An effective leader is a
person who does the following:
 Understands the needs and characteristics of the post.
 Knows and use the resources of the group
 Has Good Communication
 Does Effective Planning
 Controls group activities
 Sets an example
 Shares the leadership quality
 Evaluates properly
 Cancels in a smart way
 Represents the group
 Accepts criticism
Next the most indispensible employability skill is the Team work. Teamwork involves
working confidently within a group, contributing your own ideas effectively, taking a share of
the responsibility, being assertive - rather than being passive or aggressive, accepting and
learning from constructive criticism and giving positive, constructive feedback to others. The
following are the skills of team work.
 Ability to listen to each other‟s ideas.
 Ability to question which leads to discussion and interaction.
 Ability to respect the opinions of each other and support the team members.
 Ability to share new ideas and their findings with each other.
 Ability to assist each other and help each other
Critical thinking is also important for job seekers. Critical thinking has been defined in many
different ways. Very broad definitions include ‟thinking which has a purpose‟ or „reflective
judgement‟. The following are the critical thinking skills.
 Ability to discover and analyse their nature, function and relationship of things by breaking
them down.
 Ability to apply standards and judge in accordance with the established personal, professional
and social criteria.
 Ability to discriminate among things or situations and distinguish carefully.
 Ability to gather information, new ideas, facts and knowledge.
 Ability to draw inference or conclusion using logical reasoning.
 Ability to imagine a plan and predict its consequences.
 Ability to transform knowledge.

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The fifth is the ‘Entrepreneurship Skill’ which is the ability of identifying the apt job for
the graduates. A wide range of competences are seen as entrepreneurial and useful to
entrepreneurs, these include knowledge, skills and personal traits:
 Management skills – the ability to manage people time successfully
 Communication skills (e.g. the ability to sell ideas and persuade others)
 The ability to work both as part of a team and independently
 Ability to plan, coordinate and organise effectively
 Having Financial literacy
 Ability to research effectively the available markets, suppliers, customers and the competition
 Being Self-motivated and disciplined
 Being Adaptable
 Being an Innovative and creative thinker
 Ability to multi-task
 Ability to take responsibility and make decisions
 Ability to work under pressure
 Perseverance
 Competitiveness
 Willingness to take risks (or at least not risk averse)
 Ability to network and make contacts
The sixth category is Life-long learning. „Being well-educated is not necessarily the key
to employment‟. Lifelong learning may be broadly defined as learning that is pursued
throughout life: learning that is flexible, diverse and available at different times and in
different places. The following are the life-long learning skills.
 Ability to manage uncertainty
 Life-long learning requires motivation which is the ability to learn and feel positive.
 Information is all around and all you want to do is to listen, read, observe, practice,
experiment and experience.
 Ability to search for knowledge, trigger and examine the information.
The next category of soft skill is ‘Ethics, moral and professionalism’. It includes two
sub-skills. They are:
 Ability to understand economy crisis, environment and social cultural aspects professionally.
 Ability to take decisions related to ethics.
The above are the employability skills that a graduate should focus on to be successful in
one‟s career.
To impart soft skills in higher education the students are encouraged to take up additional
courses. For instance engineering students are encouraged to take additional courses such as
management course or media course. Sometimes the students can learn soft skills in their
respective courses. It includes activities like questioning, class discussion, brain storming,
team work, presentation, role play, project, field work and site visits. In this case the students
need to take a separate additional course. However, this model is a challenging one as the

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teachers have to master specific teaching and learning skills and then apply these skills in the
respective courses for the specific programme. Moreover, this model is based on student
centered learning and it focuses on experimental learning and problem-based learning.
Besides it gives practical experience to students. Some of the appropriate strategies and
methods that are practical include
 learning by questioning
 cooperative learning
 problem-based learning (PBL)
 E-learning.
Apart from this, there are certain informal programmes such as Personality Development
programmes that also develop soft skills among students. In addition, soft skills training can
be offered through campus-life activities.
English course taught at the first year of engineering course should incorporate the soft
skills to improve the employability. This may help the students to get through the campus
interviews. Majority of the placement officers say that the soft skills are very much essential
for the students to succeed in the campus interviews. According to some placement officers,
the students who do not have requisite skills set are being rejected at the time of their campus
interviews.
Instead of giving soft skills training programme separately for the students it is
recommended to add the soft skills to the curriculum. More weightage has to be given for
role play, group discussion, seminar, presentation, questioning, brain storming, book reviews,
interaction etc. This will initially be more challenging i.e. bringing a thorough change in
teaching methodology in the existing system but if we bring this sort of change in the existing
curriculum this will result in enhancing the skills set of the students and their personality as a
professional. Soft skills training need not be confined to English curriculum alone but also to
all other subjects. Initially it would be more challenging but it would be liked by the learners.
This will bring in more changes in the learning as well as teaching. The entire teaching should
be learner-centered approach rather than teacher-centered. In such a case the necessary
changes have to be made in the teaching methodology and curriculum as well to meet the
expectations of the corporate.
3. CONCLUSIONS
Apart from imparting technological knowledge input the engineering colleges will have to
focus on nurturing the employability skills so they can empower the talent pools. The real job
of the teaching community apart from teaching is to act as a trainer and input the students
with good employability skills catering to the demands of multinational companies. The
syllabus has able to be designed in a way to enhance the employability skills of individuals in
order to get placed in reputed multinational companies.
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