A significant percentage of graduate students of engineering collegesin India find it tough to clear the written tests, aptitude tests, group discussions and interviews conducted by the prospective employers through on-campus or off-campus recruitments though they are quite good academically and possess decent subject skills relevant to their disciplines.

The skills of technical, practical application, critical thinking and problem solving are generally categorized as hard skills. The skills of exploration, communication, analytical, general aptitude along with time management, teamwork, work ethics & leadership are categorized as soft skills.

Employers look for both hard skills and soft skills in the candidates while recruiting them. It is like when selecting a player to the cricket team, the selectors do it not based only on the core batting or bowling skills but also on their abilities of running between the wickets, fielding, throwing, catching and maintaining good fitness & health. All these matters to make a great team.

The colleges with their subject Professors active involvement can enable students to gain the required hard skills by making appropriate use of lab sessions, mini/major projects, technical workshops and internships.

The key soft skills of communication, analytical, logical thinking and general aptitude are necessary to clear initial essential gate of aptitude tests, group discussions and personal interviewsto land into good jobs or getting into other services like IES, IAS, IFS or even higher studies.

In colleges, many students generally don’t prioritize on acquiring soft skills as they are not aware of its true importance. Since this is not a subject as part of their academic curriculum to score marks and increase percentages or grades of the course, nobody takes it seriously! They realize its necessity only when they actually face the troublesome situations at the end of their courses when they are getting ready to enter into job market. It is necessary to educate and inspire them to inculcate the avenues, techniques, methods and practices of acquiring soft skills right from the beginning.

These soft skills are required not only for just entering into job but they also play very significant role in sustaining and progressing in one’s career on fast track.

It is generally assumed that these skills are already imbibed into students at high school level. But there are many students who are not strong in these, could be due to their inherent hesitations, lack of focus, ignorance or for some due to schooling in regional language medium.  These, thatare generally clubbed under soft skills are not something that can be easily acquired by most of the students by only attending trainings continuously for few days in the final year or just before the campus recruitment season (like what generally happens in many colleges).These can only be built gradually over a period of time with active, progressive, experiential learning and diligent practice.

These skills cannot be developed in students just by teaching alone about that in regular classroom sessions. Students easily get bored just listening to lectures about this. They need to be purposefully inspired and engaged to get effective outcome. It requires activity-oriented sessions where students not just listen but learn by enactment and exercise. It also requires proper application of key human elements like empathy, handholding and patience where needed.

Soft skills need to be built into students through their active participation, interactions, exploration and regular practice enabling themto become their habit. This is not something that can be focused upon and monitored regularly by the subject Professors of the institute. It requires a specific person or entity to work on the students on these aspects, motivate them &facilitate impactful sessions right from their 2^nd semester till 7^th semester. If Placement officer can take that responsibility, that is also good.

Every semester generally has around 14 work weeks excluding internals & external exam days, other events and holidays. If in each semester, 14 hours can be accommodated for soft skill sessions from 2^nd semester to 7^th semester, it would lead to a total of 84 hours available. It is suggested to create a Soft Skills club in the college with some enthusiasticstudent volunteers playing key role in conducting the necessary activities with active facilitation, motivation, coordination and tracking by Placement officer or any other specific person designated for the same. A two-hour active session should be planned and conducted every fortnight for every branch. This provides SIX active sessions every semester for a student. With some creativity, these sessions can be made interesting, engaging and entertaining too while learning. These sessions can also provide respite for students in between their study of serious subjects.It is not advisable to have large group of students in a session. It is preferred to have not more than 20 students in a session so that it ensures active participation and involvement of everyone. These are definitely not teaching sessions but more of participative and activity-oriented sessions.

Soft skills sessions can be broken down as below into their key elements that matters most, their objectives and modes of building them.