AceTrac can really amp up your employability and sharpen your skills. Here's how

Assess your skills while you study through various tests available on the AceTrac platform. They can give the results and detailed reports about which are the areas that one must improve to get a job
Representational image (AceTrac)
Representational image (AceTrac)

It is essential for students to stand out if companies have to hire them. But standing out does not literally mean to stand out of the classroom. It means to be skilled enough so that companies select you to come on board. And that is where AceTrac could make the difference. The platform offers an online employability test to tackle comprehensive skill assessment needs. We spoke to Ambrish Sinha, CEO of MeritTrac, the company that organises the test, to know more about what AceTrac does to benefit students and get them placed in companies.

Excerpts from the interview: 

1) Why should college students choose AceTrac?

AceTrac is one of the platforms of MeritTrac that we have taken to our student community to accurately assess the employability of any candidate for any job. For the student community, Ace Track helps them identify their weakness and strengths. It helps students prepare for jobs while they study, be prepared much before the campus placement season and makes it easy for hiring organisations to connect with the job-ready candidates. More importantly, it gives them the benchmark against the industry expectations and the best practices for that particular job. Hence, it gives them the best chances to crack the interviews. 

2) What is the method that you follow to approach students?

There are two ways to approach the students in this market. Since MeritTrac is a bigger platform, we have a lot of collaboration with state universities and colleges. Hence AceTrac has the same coverage model for upskilling students. One approach is that we leverage our existing relationships with colleges. We also collaborate with other technology platforms that work with students to help them crack various competitive exams. We give them other options for jobs in the market. If the colleges approach us directly then we also guide their students.

Ambrish Sinha, CEO, MeritTrac 

3) What are the different assessment methods that you use to check the level of employability in the students?

There are several assessment methods that we follow including cognitive assessment, psychometric assessment, domain assessment, behavioural assessment, aptitude test, spoken English test, online coding tests etc. 

4) Since you are working closely with students and corporates, what are the skills that students must have to get employed?

Corporates expect the students to know at least the basic skills when they hire. For example, if I am hiring a software engineer, I expect him to have good coding and analytical skills. If the candidates write on their CV that they are good at C++, Java, Python etc, then the recruiter expects them to know the basics of these software programmes. Apart from this, they must be having simple skills like making presentations and communication skills. In a nutshell, these assessments help students to know where they stand when it comes to skills and knowledge. Similarly, companies that hire them will understand that these are the particular set of skills that the student community has.

5) While many students consider skills to hire students, what is the need to consider marks?

Companies do have a baseline criteria for marks when they go to colleges to hire students. We can categorise this into two parts including freshers or people who have work experience in that particular field. They will not hire students who have failed in the exams or have backlogs. The threshold that the companies will set when it comes to percentage or marks is only 50 per cent which many students will qualify during campus interviews. 

In the second category, the corporates will look for what work you have done in the two or three years of your experience rather than marks. People might have 45 per cent marks only but if you have had a great work career, then there is no second thought to hire the person. But at the entry-level and the first job, companies do consider marks. If there are 5,000 vacancies across different companies and 15,000 people apply, that's where marks come into a picture. This doesn't mean that if you have scored 80 per cent, you will be able to get through. That's why marks and skills go hand in hand.

6) What are your plans for AceTrac?

We are working towards making AceTrac a pan-India platform. We want to collaborate with more universities than we are currently doing. Apart from this, we want to be the biggest platform when it comes to the assessment of employability skills.

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