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College House at the University of Colombo was recently the venue of a presentation by a group of undergraduates, to say "thank you" to SriLankan Airlines Ltd. for a pioneering effort to provide mentoring and career guidance to young undergraduates, which is aimed at helping undergraduates develop skills needed for private sector careers and make them employable on graduation.

A dozen undergraduates of the Arts and Commerce Faculties of the University of Colombo made presentations using the latest techniques and tools which included Power Point Software to demonstrate to the Vice Chancellor and Deans, the skills and competencies they had acquired with SriLankan Airlines during their mentoring program.

The eloquence and ease with which they delivered their presentations, surprised many in the audience.

"I hope that this program will help us to bridge the gap between the private sector and the university system," said Prof. Savithri Gunasekera, Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo.

"You can't learn in a few hours how to face an interview or how to write a CV. We wanted to give boys and girls from several areas a chance to come forward into the limelight and prepare themselves for employment in the private sector.

It is an investment of our time and energy in the future generation of our country," said the airline's Head of Human Resources, Sunil Dissanayake who together with Dr. Keerthi Premadasa, Director, Career Guidance Unit of the University of Colombo pioneered the concept of mentoring and introduced it to the university system in Sri Lanka.

A few years ago the Career Guidance Unit of the University of Colombo began a program aimed at helping undergraduates find jobs in the private sector. This included job fairs and lectures by private sector professionals regarding opportunities in the private sector and what today's companies expect of graduates.

However it was noticed that many of these young men and women while learning much academically in their respective fields while in university, lacked many of the other soft skills that are vital if they are to secure employment in the private sector, on graduation.

SriLankan Airlines is one of the companies that has been in the forefront of the mentoring program for undergraduates. There are currently three mentors from SriLankan Airlines Ltd., who are Head of Human Resources, Sunil Dissanayake, Manager, Human Resources, Menik Dias Amaratunga and Manager, Human Resources Development and Training, Ranjeewa Kulatunga.

Each mentor spends about two hours per month with each mentee, teaching them how to develop their personalities and soft skills. In addition, mentees spend their vacation months with SriLankan Airlines, learning on-the-job the practical aspects of the private sector.

"We learned many skills which will be vital for us in finding jobs in the private sector, such as effective communication and presentation skills in English and to operate personal computers," said Wasantha Wijethunga, one of the undergraduates on the program.

"There are a lot of skills like telephone manners, facing interviews, working in teams and making presentations which we don't learnt at universities, we learned from the mentoring program," another undergraduate, Ms. T. M. Dilhani said.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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