Indo-Pak graduate aspirations

This space featured a story last week on the aspirations of Pakistan’s coming crop of graduates (“What graduates want?” published on September 15, 2015). Universum, the Swedish firm that did the survey, has also conducted a similar survey on the Indian market and it’s interesting to see how the two markets fare in their near graduates’ career preferences.
Globalizing influences seem to be leaving a deep imprint on tertiary students in the two countries. The survey showed that both Pakistani and Indian business students have a strong orientation towards international careers. Pakistani students were generally motivated by high future earnings and working with international firms. Besides high earnings, Indian students were looking for a dynamic workplace and leadership opportunities.
The best shot at that, in their dominant view, is working for multinationals. Very few local private-sector companies came up in the respective top-20 list of ideal employers. In both countries, business grads opted more for the services sector compared to engineers that had a bend for manufacturing sectors.
However, there is a key difference in sectoral preferences. For instance, seven out of ten, top preferred firms in India were in the IT/software business. This could be explained by the fact that India, for over a decade, has been the world’s back office for IT/software works, and has lately been leaving its mark in the high-end software development.
Whereas in Pakistan, only two software firms figured in the top-ten list. That could be because Pakistan has been unable to source software back-office and development activities from the West the like of which India has capitalized on since the turn of the millennium.
FMCGs were seen to have more preference in Pakistan, with six of those featuring in the top ten. So it’s no wonder that many business grads, even from top business schools, seem to consider it a “dream” to work for MNCs like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. For a contrast, Unilever came at number three and Coca Cola at number four in ideal employer ranking by Pakistani business students. For Indian business students, Coke was at a distant 20th place and Hindustan Unilever a 22nd choice.
That finding chimes well with the anecdotal evidence from India. In a recent talk organized by PRIME Institute, cyber entrepreneurs such as Mansoor Malik, who brought The Indus Entrepreneurs to Pakistan, Furqan Kidwai, the CEO of Pakistan’s first online health store called Dawaai.pk, and Murtaza Zaidi a serial cyber entrepreneur and the CEO of CyberVision International had one common observation to share: that top Indian graduates from top universities are not opting for MNCs – as is the case in Pakistan.
Instead more and more top Indian graduates are choosing to become entrepreneurs or seek to work at local Indian firms that allow employees to thrive on their entrepreneurial skills, instead of following the regular ‘job model’. It would be great if organizations like Universum produce some detailed studies along these lines.
In keeping with the global millennial attitudes, both nations’ business students considered work-life balance as a must in their future careers. They also wanted their workplaces to allow them an outlet for their creative and entrepreneurial spirits. Keeping that in mind, it would not be enough for governments to just create more jobs, but create jobs that pay well and provide incentives that allow the private sector to accommodate demanding expectations from this generation.