The pace of globalization, despite its critics around the world, has increased rapidly in recent years. This reality raises increasingly pressing management issues for multinationals engaged in today's complex and rapidly changing environment. Various studies and reports point to the gap in the skill set of an individual vis-à-vis the expectations of the industry. One of the key areas that are required to enhance to fill that gap are `soft skills'. `Soft skills' or `life skills' pertain to the skills required by any individual related to the various aspects of his personality like communication skills, time management, self-esteem, team work, leadership, cross cultural sensitivity, and the like. The problematic notion of skills and the current emphasis on `soft skills' and the association with an IT industry-related discourse concerning employability is discussed in this article.

The importance of soft skills has been acknowledged in several occupations such as managers, pilots, entry level managers (Boyatzis, 1982; and Damitz et al., 2003), etc., across cultures (Nonaka and Johansson, 1985) and across job and pay levels (Holzer et al., 2004). Business is changing constantly. The shift in the workplace from manufacturing/production work to service/knowledge work (Drucker, 1993) has brought about changes in the nature of job performance both in the developed and developing world. Jobs in the service sector are characterized by interpersonal and face-to-face interactions with employees, customers, or clients. Employees, thus, are able to effectively perform behaviors related to the interpersonal nature of work performance. Employers are considering the role effective `soft skill' performances can play in employees helping to achieve organizational goals.

According to Gartner Vice President Partha Iyengar, "only 25% of the total graduates in India were employable". Supporting this, a 2005 McKinsey study (NASSCOM-McKinsey Report, 2005) revealed that only 25% of Indian engineering graduates, 15% of Indian finance and accounting professionals and 10% of professionals with any kind of degrees, in India, are suitable for working in multinational companies. This leaves the other 75% to stretch that extra mile to be able to get into a job.

Soft Skills, IT Industry, Globalization, Communication skills, Time management, Self-esteem, Team work, Cross cultural sensitivity, Interpersonal skills, Organizational goals, Multinational companies, MNCs, Conflict management, Decision making process, Presentation skills.