In the current scenario, employment opportunities are immense, but the industry seeks employable graduates and not just graduates. Employability doesn't mean getting a job. There is a wrong perception: qualification=employability. Just because a student has completed MBA degree, somehow people think employability is automatic. Employability is not just developing attributes, techniques and skills just to enable a student to get a job or progress in his career. It is all about continuous learning, and less emphasis on `employ' and more on improvement of `ability'. This article discusses the concept and different contexts of `employability'. It also focuses on measures to develop the employability skills of management graduates and bridge the demand-supply gap.

Employability generally refers to employment. It also includes self- improvement. `Employability' has been defined differently by different persons, but the salient features such as acquisition of attributes (KSA Factors) remain the same. KSA stands for:

Hillage and Pollard defined `employability' as: "A person's ability of gaining initial employment, maintaining it and if required further obtaining new employment." Brown and colleagues (Brown et al., 2002, p. 9) objected to the Hillage and Pollard definition and offered a different definition of employability: "The relative chances of finding and maintaining different kinds of employment." University of Newcastle (Allison et al., 2002) defines employability as the "Capacity to move self-sufficiently into and within the labor market, to fulfill potential through sustainable employment". Many others define it as the "Capability of getting and keeping fulfilling work". A broader definition includes: "It is the lifestyle choice and abilities to ensure lifelong learning."

Thousands of students are graduating from hundreds of B-Schools across India. But the placement track record of most of the institutes (except tier-I and a few reputed tier-II B-Schools) are not very impressive. The placement percentages announced by most of the B-Schools are the function of eligibility criteria. 20-50% (approx) students may not be eligible to attend the campus recruitment. Finally, placement percentage is calculated based on the eligible students, but projection says only the percentage (like 100% placement). The question here is, why most of the students are not eligible? And out of those, who are eligible? Why many can't secure a job? Understanding the meaning of employability and various measures to improve employability ratings will definitely help students to focus on those areas. This article aims to do just that.

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