Not so long ago, a fresh graduate had to go in search of jobs, be it an engineering or a management graduate. The fresher had to look for job opportunities in newspapers or use the family and friends network to source a job; most of the time the fresher had to be content with the famous statement "no vacancy". A potential employee was in the lookout for a potential employer; it was tough. But over the last decade or so the situation has completely reversed; now potential employers are on the lookout for potential employees and they are willing to visit the college themselves which is known as "Campus Placements".
Probably the audacity of students has raised multi-fold over these years because they perhaps are under the impression that they have the choice to pick and choose their type of industry, company, location, profile, designation and also salary. In fact, almost every instance only aspiration of a student has been given the importance than the most important requirement which is "competency".
The world has evolved from employer seekers to employee seekers but what has not evolved is the need for being "job ready" or being "employable" which is the simple secret to a successful placement. In fact, the employers/recruiters take a big risk coming on to campuses to hire freshers who have no feeling of real-world challenges, but students think they are doing a favor to the recruiters by joining them. Unfortunately, it has been found that some of the freshers who join through campus placements do not last long in the same companies because the entire campus placement would have been more of a "marriage of convenience" than being a "marriage of conviction".
There seems to be some kind of a non-alignment of thoughts with some of them; it is like looking London going Tokyo! The solutions are not easy to find though because there has to be an overhaul of the entire approach and the blame for that would not rest with the education institutions alone but has to be on the recruiters also.
To bridge this gap, Jain (Deemed-to-be University) (Top private Universities in Bangalore) had always been striving with various initiatives and continuously adapt to the changing environment. We seek the help of our recruiters and work on the below-mentioned points.
- The placement season for those who are aspiring to join new jobs during April-June of any forthcoming year gets active during September of this year that would last till next March. We encourage our recruiters to discuss their possible requirements with us this year itself so we can prepare our students accordingly
- The Department of Industry Interface and placements work closely with the recruiters by obtaining the job requirements as early as 1st semester of an academic year
- When the recruiters arrive at our University for the current season of the placement, we ask them to dedicate a few hours discussing their experience with the past year recruited students and offer suggestions to the University on the good and bad aspects
- The recruiters offer an in-principle job description with the expected role that a fresher would play including the qualification parameters, skill sets required and any specific certifications that would enhance the placement possibility, which we call it as JD Grid. We share the same with the students at the commencement of the course itself, so they know the industry requirements
- Employability mapping (assessment tests) are done frequently with rigorous tests
- Students are engaged at least 4 hours per week on the future job readiness with experiences of the last two years of the placement process
- Certifications required that enhances the placement is offered to students based on their decided aspirations
- Recruiters to offer internships for students during the forthcoming internship months
- Under Connect To Careers, guest lecture by a senior person from the recruiter to visit the campus and meet the 1st /2nd-semester students and give them a rundown of their company and the jobs and engage them in a Q&A session
- Under Words of Wisdom, guest lecture by technical/business leaders from the company to interact with the students and share their knowledge from a technical or business perspective
- Under Learn2Apply, We encourage companies to organize Workshops on technical areas
- Under Experiential Learning, We request companies to help us with the industrial visits
- To offer any desk projects or live projects for juniors that aligns them with their aspirations and encourage them to actively participate
- To offer any short duration job-specific training programs
- Through the Department of Industry Interface, the recruiters to discuss the latest trends in their respective industries/companies by asking us to implement such learning/teaching for students in the curriculum
- The recruiters meet a small batch of students who are really eager to join them and the best-prepared candidate would get the job.
The entire placement process is reverse engineered, keeping in mind the end result. This is definitely not rocket science but a simple process being implemented that would be mutually beneficial for all the stakeholders - students, institutions and the recruiters.