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Top1. Introduction
The Information Technology (IT) sector’s contribution towards India’s Gross Domestic is substantial. The IT sector in India has been growing and transforming businesses especially as a low-cost and high skilled outsourcing destination (IBEF, 2018). FICCI and NASSCOM (2017) in their report on “Industry 4.0 - exponential technologies” detailed the possibilities of new job roles in IT by the year 2020. The report emphasized that 60-65% of employees in the IT/ITeS sector require new employability skills in terms of technical know-how as well as emotional well-being. In a contradiction, Aspiring Minds (2019) in their report emphasized that India has a low availability rate of employability skills among IT sector engineers this is despite the fact that it is envisaged that in the IT world, 13 percent out of 2 million potential graduates in the world will get employment in India (Aspiring Minds, 2019). The National Employability Report (2019) states, “the employability of Indian engineers continues to be painfully low with 80 percent engineers unemployable for any job in a knowledge economy.” Hiring guidelines in the IT industry expect the candidate to possess both technical and soft skills. This requires primary command over language, technical capabilities along with cognitive capabilities to learn from trainings quickly and efficiently. Bearing in mind these basic requirements, only 16.25% of Indian IT graduates are trainable to become software engineers (National Employability Report, 2019). The report also emphasized methodical and fundamental changes in the curriculum of higher education by incorporating modules not only on technical but also on soft skills to make engineers employable as per industry requirements. Fresh engineering graduates need to have a balance of technical as well as soft skills (IBEF Report, 2018). The radical changes in globalization, technologies and focus on cross-cultural overseas assignments have transformed the mindsets of employers. Employers have expectations from fresh engineering graduates to contribute immediately to goals of the organization with soft, generic and technical skills. Therefore, it becomes essential to understand which skills increase the chances of campus placement of young IT graduates.
The construct of emotional maturity has gained a lot of attention not only from employers but also from researchers. Emotional maturity significantly influences job performance, self-motivation, and interpersonal as well as social skills (Standen et al., 2014; Nehra and Rangenaker, 2018). Fernández-Sanz, et al., (2017) and Crow and Crow (1962) highlighted that an “emotionally mature or stable individual, regardless of his age, is the one who has the ability to overcome tension to disregard certain emotion stimulators that affect the young and view himself objectively, as he evaluates his assets and liabilities and strives towards an improved integration of his thought, his emotional attitude and his overt behavior.” Sweeny and Twomey (1997, p.299) assert, “Employers are now looking beyond content and focusing more on attributes and skills that enable graduates to be adaptive and transformative.” A mix of both technical and behavioral skills is preferred by employers (Judge and Bono, 2001; Lazarsfeld-Jensen, 2010; Fernández et al.,2017). An emotionally mature person can deal with the situations accordingly and can manage emotions well even in extreme conditions (Judge and Bono, 2001; Goyal, 2013). Coetzee and Beukes (2010) followed by Chand et al., (2019) discussed the scarcity of research between the emotional well-being of a person and career anchors and how career anchors lead to employer satisfaction. Seal et al., (2011) and Ahangar (2012) also emphasized that the curriculum in universities must include emotional concepts for students. Employers show their interest in those graduates who exhibit the qualities of confidence, and optimism and who believe in showcasing their uniqueness in their performance. Employers prefer graduates who are emotionally stable, can easily accommodate themselves in existing work culture, can achieve organizational goals and work efficiently in teams with innovative ideas (Kemper, 1999; Avkiran, 2000; Archer and Davidson, 2008; Sadri, 2012; Goyal, 2015; Chand et al., 2019).