Which credential young Keralites think actually moves a CV

The full distribution for “Which educational resource do you value most to make your resume/CV employable?” (n = 399) is: The prestige and percentage of my University Degree — 39.6% (158); A strong portfolio of independent practical projects — 29.1% (116); Global skill certifications (Google, AWS, etc.) — 19.8% (79); Letters of recommendation from intense internships — 11.5% (46).

The cohort is moderately concentrated on this question. One option leads without dominating, so the second and third answers carry real policy weight. The smallest recorded answer, letters of recommendation from intense internships, still represents 46 people — a group large enough to matter in programme design even at 11.5%.

These are self-reported answers from a community-recruited cohort of 399 young Keralites surveyed between 21 May and 28 June 2026. They are not probability-sample estimates of Kerala's youth population, and confidence intervals from random sampling do not apply.

Because 74.4% of respondents sit in one age band and 72.7% identify as male, subgroup differences are indicative at best. Cross-tabulated claims require a larger, stratified sample.

Finally, the survey measures single-point self-report, so it can establish association and scale but not direction or cause. Where this brief notes a pattern across two questions, that pattern is descriptive.