Portraying the shortage of right talent for companies to hire, a latest study said just 18 per cent of the fresh technical graduates surveyed possessed right skills to be eligible for jobs in IT services companies.

As per the study of over 40,000 technical graduates by assessment technology company Aspiring Minds, a majority of fresh engineering graduates require additional training to be eligible for any job in the IT/ITeS sector.

The employability study was based on results of a computer-based test called AMCAT conducted for engineering and Masters in Computer Applications (MCA) students (in final year) across 12 states in the country.

"Employability with regard to IT services companies is 17.84 per cent," the study found.

Employability refers to skills like English communication, quantitative skills, problem-solving skills and computer science and programming skills, which fresh graduates must possess to get employed by firms.

Employability of these graduates with regard to IT product companies is as low as 4.22 per cent, the study said.

Further, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPOs) firms find only 9.47 per cent technical graduates employable.

For BPOs and Technical Support jobs the employability is 38.23 per cent and 25.88 per cent, respectively.

The employability figures are based on actual hiring benchmarks on AMCAT scores set by multiple companies in IT/ITeS related sectors.

The report also revealed employability of MCA students is almost half of that of engineering students in case IT services companies and KPOs.

However, MCA candidates have excellent potential for becoming employable at IT product companies, given their good computer programming skills, the study stated.