Only 23 per cent of MBAs are employable: Merit Trac survey

07 February 2007

Chennai: The problem of employability not only plagues engineering graduates but also MBAs. According to a survey conducted by Merit Trac Services, India's largest skills assessment company, only 23 per cent of the MBA graduates are employable.

The study was compiled from a sample of over 800 MBA graduates across six major cities. Each candidate was tested on verbal, quantitative and mental application abilities as well as four group interaction attributes – articulation, grammar, assertiveness and confidence.

The study places in a factual context the skills gap in the mushrooming B-school marketplace voiced by experts on many occasions and platforms for the past two years. That, the growth in the number of B-schools and the number of graduates they churn out has not translated into increased employable pool for India Inc. to hire from.

The study also reveals that each city is characterised by a distinct style of performance and there is no single predictor of success in the tests across the cities sampled.

On the geographical-divide in terms of the performance of the MBA talent pool:

• Mumbai tops the charts as the best city to hire an MBA from due to its flashes of brilliance.
• Kolkata emerges as the next best place to hire from due to its consistent performance across tests. Delhi was conspicuous by its indifferent performance;
• Hyderabad rallied towards the end to occupy a spot of merit while
• Bangalore and Chennai truly fell short of expectations but maintain the competitive edge owing to the quantum of the talent pool available