Overview

Partner: A State Skill Development Mission (state name withheld at government partner's request) Programme: Dheya-State Partnership — Aptitude-Based Vocational Pathway Matching Beneficiaries: 8,500 youth aged 18–28 Implementation Locations: 47 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the state Duration: February 2024 to January 2025 Primary Outcomes: 34% reduction in training dropout; 28% improvement in post-training employment conversion

The Starting Point: A Completion Problem Disguised as an Enrolment Problem

India's vocational training system has produced impressive enrolment statistics for a decade. The harder question — one that state governments have been slower to ask publicly — is what happens after enrolment.

The State Skill Development Mission had its own data. Across its network of 47 ITIs, the average training programme completion rate was 61%. This meant that nearly four in ten enrolled youth were dropping out before programme completion. Of those who did complete, placement conversion — youth who were employed in a related role within six months of completing their certificate — was 44%.

The combined throughput efficiency (enrolment × completion × employment conversion) was approximately 27%. For every hundred youth who enrolled in a vocational programme, twenty-seven ended up employed in a field related to their training.

The Mission's Director of Strategy, who led the partnership engagement with Dheya, put the problem directly: "We can mobilise youth. We're good at that. The problem is we're putting people into programmes based on availability, not aptitude. A young man who signs up for Electrician because it's the first class that had seats available has a very different experience from one who signs up because electrical work actually matches how his mind works. We need that matching step before enrolment, not after."

The Design Challenge: Assessment at Government Scale

Commercial psychometric assessments are designed for individual or small-group use, with trained administrators, stable internet access, and participants who have the literacy levels and test-taking familiarity to engage with them reliably. ITI students — predominantly semi-urban and rural youth from families with limited formal education backgrounds — present several complicating factors.

Literacy range: The 8,500 youth in the programme had educational qualifications ranging from Class 8 pass to Class 12 pass. A single assessment instrument needed to be accessible across this range.

Digital access: While most youth had smartphone access, consistent internet connectivity at 47 ITI locations was not guaranteed. The assessment needed to function offline.

Prior assessment experience: Many participants had never taken a structured psychometric test. The administration protocol needed to address test anxiety, misinterpretation of question intent, and the temptation to answer based on what they thought was the "right" answer rather than honest self-reflection.

Language: The state's primary language was used for all participant-facing materials; Hindi was provided as an alternative for youth who were more comfortable in it.

Dheya worked with the Mission over a six-week design period to produce a specific instrument: the Dheya Vocational Aptitude Matcher (VAM), an adapted 32-item tool that assessed four dimensions mapped to vocational training suitability rather than career planning broadly:

  • Technical orientation: Preference for precision, mechanical understanding, and structured procedural work
  • Interpersonal orientation: Preference for work involving service, communication, and human interaction
  • Creative-practical orientation: Preference for making, designing, and aesthetic problem-solving
  • Operational orientation: Preference for planning, coordination, and process management

Each of these dimensions mapped to clusters of vocational programmes available at the state's ITIs:

  • Technical → Electrician, Fitter, Plumber, Mechanic Motor Vehicle, Electronics
  • Interpersonal → Retail, Healthcare Assistant, Hospitality, Beauty and Wellness
  • Creative-Practical → Fashion Technology, Interior Design, Textile Design
  • Operational → Logistics, Data Entry Operator, Computer Operator and Programming

Programme Implementation

Phase 1: Counsellor Training (February–March 2024)

Each of the 47 ITIs had one designated Placement and Counselling Officer (PCO). Dheya trained all 47 PCOs in a two-day residential workshop on:

  • Administering the VAM assessment
  • Interpreting profile results in accessible language
  • Conducting a 30-minute guidance conversation with a prospective student
  • Handling common scenarios: student preference conflicts with aptitude profile; family expectations conflict with both; popular programmes at capacity forcing consideration of alternatives

Post-training competency assessment: 43 of 47 PCOs achieved the required proficiency level. Four required one additional day of coaching. All 47 were cleared for programme delivery.

A WhatsApp-based support group was established for all PCOs throughout the programme period, enabling rapid escalation of unusual cases and peer knowledge sharing. Dheya programme managers monitored the group and provided guidance, which became an active channel with over 400 substantive exchanges over the 12-month period.

Phase 2: Pre-Enrolment Assessment Rollout (April–June 2024)

The VAM assessment was integrated into the enrolment process at all 47 ITIs. From April 2024, any student applying for enrolment completed the assessment as the first step — before filling out the programme application form.

The sequencing was deliberate. If the assessment was conducted after programme selection, it would feel like a post-hoc validation. Conducted before, it became the starting point of a conversation about fit.

Assessment administration took 25 minutes. Each student received an immediate profile summary (a single A4 printed output) showing their dominant orientation and the programme clusters that typically aligned with it. The PCO then conducted a structured 30-minute guidance conversation using a standardised conversation guide.

The conversation was structured around three questions:

  1. "What drew you to the programme you came in to apply for today?"
  2. "Looking at your profile, here is what it suggests about how you work best. Does that sound right to you?"
  3. "Are there any programmes on this list [the aligned cluster] that you have not considered but might be interested in learning more about?"

The third question was the most productive. In 31% of cases, it prompted students to shift their programme preference — not because they were told to, but because the guidance conversation had surfaced options they had not known about or had dismissed without investigation.

Phase 3: Mid-Programme Check-ins (July–October 2024)

PCOs conducted structured mid-programme check-ins with enrolled students at the three-month mark. The check-in protocol included a brief satisfaction assessment (five items), a skills progress self-evaluation, and a forward-looking conversation about employment targets post-completion.

Students showing early dropout risk indicators (attendance below 75%, satisfaction scores below 3/5 on two or more dimensions) were referred for individual counselling sessions. In 78 cases, students were offered a programme transfer to a more suitable track — a process that had previously been bureaucratically difficult at most ITIs but was streamlined as part of the Dheya partnership with explicit Mission support.

Phase 4: Employment Support (November 2024–January 2025)

The final phase addressed the employment conversion gap. PCOs were trained in a simplified version of Dheya's career preparation methodology: CV writing for certificate holders, interview preparation for entry-level vocational roles, and employer outreach.

The Mission agreed to share its existing employer network data — companies that had previously hired from state ITIs — with Dheya's programme team. Dheya categorised these employers by programme type and provided PCOs with targeted employer lists for their specific ITI, based on the programmes that ITI offered.

Results

Training Completion

The overall completion rate across all 47 ITIs improved from a pre-programme baseline of 61% to 82% for the 2024–25 cohort — a 34% reduction in dropout rate (calculated as the dropout rate falling from 39% to 18%).

The completion improvement was not uniform across all programmes. The largest improvements were in programmes where the highest proportion of students had been enrolled based on VAM alignment (Electrician: 71% to 91%; Healthcare Assistant: 64% to 87%). The smallest improvements were in programmes with the lowest VAM alignment rates — primarily high-demand programmes where seats were limited and students were enrolled on a first-come-first-served basis regardless of aptitude match.

This dose-response pattern — better alignment leading to better completion — was the strongest evidence for the intervention's mechanism. It was not the counselling conversations alone that reduced dropout; it was the matching itself.

Post-Training Employment Conversion

Employment conversion improved from 44% to 56% (a 27% improvement). This improvement reflected both the employment support activities in Phase 4 and a compositional effect: students who had completed training in aligned programmes were better prepared for employment in their fields and were more motivated to pursue it.

PCO Confidence and Competence

Post-programme survey of the 47 PCOs: 89% reported that they felt more competent in their counselling role after the programme than before it. 76% reported using the VAM framework informally even in conversations outside the structured assessment process. 92% recommended continuing and expanding the programme.

What Changed in the ITI Culture

The Mission's Director of Strategy observed a change that the programme's outcome metrics do not capture directly: the enrolment conversation at ITIs had been transformed.

"Before this programme, the conversation at enrolment was: here are the programmes we have, which one do you want? The student typically pointed at whichever programme their friend was taking or their family thought was best. The counsellor processed the paperwork. There was no conversation about fit.

Now the counsellor starts by saying: let me understand something about you first. That change — from transaction to conversation — is something I didn't expect and didn't specifically plan for. It has changed how the PCOs think about their role."

This cultural change is the outcome that the programme team believes has the longest-lasting impact. Assessment tools and training materials can be replicated. A shift in how an institution thinks about its relationship to the people it serves is more durable and more valuable.

Scale Considerations

The 8,500-beneficiary programme was explicitly designed as a proof of concept for a larger state-wide rollout. Based on the results, the Mission has approved a second phase covering 26,000 youth across 112 ITIs in the 2025–26 academic year.

The second phase will include three enhancements:

  • An employer-facing portal through which companies can post entry-level vacancies aligned to specific ITI programme types, and PCOs can submit qualified candidate profiles
  • A follow-up survey at the 12-month post-completion mark to track employment retention (not just initial placement)
  • An extended PCO certification programme that qualifies selected high-performing PCOs as regional trainers, enabling the training model to scale without requiring Dheya to directly train every new PCO in the expanded network

Dheya works with state governments, skill development missions, and public sector institutions to integrate career guidance into vocational and employment programmes. For information about government and public sector partnerships, contact our institutional team.