EMPLOYABILITY IN BFSI SECTOR - A STUDY OF MANAGEMENT GRADUATES IN BANGALORE

Management Education in India is more than half a century old. In the last twenty years, the growth of management education in India has been phenomenal. Students look at management education as a golden corridor towards a white-collar job. There has been a tremendous growth in the number of institutions offering management education – a ray of hope in young minds to get well-paid jobs. Corporates capitalize on these skill sets/competencies that are honed in a business school and add their experiences to shape the future managers. Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) is an industry term for companies that provide a range of such financial products/services such as universal Banks. BFSI is presently the booming sector which is employing majority of the management graduates. It is the biggest employer which is creating jobs for the Management graduates. The industry is facing a lot of challenges in hiring competent workforce who are employable as per industry requirements. There is a huge employability gap in the industry that needs to get reduced. This being the scenario, there is a need to provide an overview of competencies and skills required for reducing the employability gaps in industries and to put forward the possible solutions to reduce the gaps. Projected human resource with expected competencies and the available graduates with required level of competencies needed for performance have a huge gap. Therefore, there is an expected change in educational profile of the management graduates who are the prospective candidates of the BFSI Sector. Hence the present study identifies and discusses about various studies related to skill development and competencies and attempts to identify the competencies BFSI sector is looking at from the graduating management students to be made employable in this sector. The data was collected from 578 respondents who are the management post graduates from management institutions in Bangalore and 167 Human resource managers from BFSI companies, in Bangalore. The data was collected by circulating the questionnaire using both offline and online method. The sample for the study was sourced through purposive sampling technique The data obtained from the respondents were tabulated and analysed using statistical instruments. For analysing the data obtained, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 25.0 was used, to perform factor analysis and multi variant analysis, AMOS ® Software was used. The other Statistical Tools and techniques used are, Frequency and Percentage, Descriptive statistics used are Mean, Standard deviation, Skewness, kurtosis and testing of the scale reliability. As the questionnaire was self-prepared using the 5-point Likert agreement scale, it becomes important to check the reliability and validity of the questionnaire and finally for Testing of hypothesis, ANOVA, Independent t test, Structural Equation Modelling was used. The analysis of the study has been able to establish the significant relationship between demographic profile of the students and the additional competencies (additional courses and industry interface activities) and KSA competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) needed for employability from the perspective of management graduates and BFSI Human resource managers. The study also helped to find their impact on employability at BFSI sector and finally through the gap analysis, to understand BFSI Human resource manager’s expectation and students’ perception on competencies needed for employment among the students. The findings and the suggestions of the study will contribute towards reducing the competency gap between the BFSI Human resource managers and management graduates and further work on strategies on building competencies needed for employment of MBA graduates in BFSI sector. KEYWORDS: Management graduates, BFSI sector, Human resource managers, Competencies, and Employability. Keywords: Management graduates, BFSI sector, Human resource managers, Competencies, and Employability