March 19: Lack of summer training opportunities that can make a student industry-ready and want of soft skills that help them ace job interviews are two big factors behind many engineering graduates from Bengal remaining unemployed, according to industry representatives.

The consensus emerged yesterday at a conclave to discuss employability that was attended by senior officials of various companies, including HR heads from companies like Cognizant Technology Solutions, Wipro, Shapoorji Pallonji & Company and Berger Paints.

The participants felt the way out is partnership between industry and academia to create more opportunities for students to be industry-ready and acquire soft skills.

Somesh Dasgupta, president (corporate affairs and administration), India Power Corporation, who delivered the welcome address at the conclave, told Metro that data collated by the All India Council of Technical Education show less than 1 per cent of engineering students in Bengal participate in summer internship.

"Bengal has witnessed the mushrooming of private engineering colleges but the absence of internship opportunities and soft skills has created a situation where graduates are not getting jobs that pay Rs 10,000 monthly," said Dasgupta, who is also chairperson of the people management committee of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the conclave.

In industry-starved Bengal, the problem of unemployment extends far beyond private engineering colleges.

In 2013, the then vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University, Souvik Bhattacharyya, had convened a meeting with department heads to deal with a bleak placement scenario in engineering after it emerged that several students at the premier institute had failed to the clear placement interviews.

That same year, the Bengal Engineering and Science University, which has since become the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, was forced into a stock-taking exercise after a similar experience.

A member of the chamber of commerce said the college curriculum was dated and the organisation had submitted a proposal to make tech syllabuses more in tune with the needs of the industry.

Both private and government engineering colleges in Bengal are affiliated to the West Bengal University of Technology, to which the chamber had submitted the proposal three months ago.

"There is a standard complaint that the curriculum is loaded with theory. Engineering education has to be a combination of theoretical and practical training. This may be the reason why colleges are averse to sending students for internships. From our end, we can get the industry to help the university authorities in framing the syllabus," said the member.

The conclave was also attended by engineering students. Arnab Ghosh, a final-year IT student at a private college, said HR heads attending the conclave had urged him to use online tutorials to develop his skills if he did not receive enough help from his college.