Archive for the ‘Employment’ Category
Students play it safe, choose jobs over higher education
Swaroop Chatterjee, a 24-year-old who graduated in electronics engineering from a Kolkata-based institute this year, was determined to pursue further studies abroad. However, now, he has decided to join a Bangalore-based information technology firm. “Early last year, I had decided to pursue an MS (master of science) course in the US. But looking at the environment, I thought it was too risky. I will join work later this year,” he said.
Chatterjee is not alone. Instead of pursuing higher education, many of his classmates have decided to accept job offers. With the absence of attractive scholarships for foreign institutions and multiple job offers absent in the market, this year, students have decided to choose a safer option.
This was observed by major recruiters, which have seen a positive impact in their joining ratios. According to industry estimates, joining ratios rose 10-15 per till the quarter ended June. Joining ratio is the ratio of the number of job offers accepted by the candidates to the number of jobs offered to them in a year’s time.
Ajoy Mukherjee, Executive Vice-President and Head (Global Human Resources), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), said, “Joining ratios have gone up this quarter (ended June). This clearly shows students want to join companies instead of going for higher studies. Though it is too early to give a number, an increase has been noted.”
Deepak Jain, Senior Vice-President and Global Head (Workforce Planning and Development), Wipro Technologies, said there was an uptrend in the joining ratio this year—for both engineering and BSc (bachelor of science) streams. He added a definite reason for this was over the last year, the company had conducted various engagement programmes to ensure students remained connected with Wipro after the offer was rolled out.
Placement officers at various colleges attribute the rise in joining ratios to the gloomy economy. S R Pullabhotle, Director (Placement and Training), Vellore Institute of Technology said the rise was due to the fact that other economies, including those in Europe and the US, were witnessing a slowdown. “Big, fat scholarships are lacking in this scenario. Students do not want to take a risk by rejecting a job offer,” he said.
Another placement head of a technology institute in West Bengal said after completing their engineering degrees, students usually went abroad for a master’s course. Since the economies abroad were bleeding and were in a scenario worse than India, students were playing it safe, he added.
Human resource consulting firms confirm this trend. Sunil Goel, Director, GlobalHunt, said apart from the slowdown hitting the economy, a change in the importance given to industry exposure could also be a reason for students choosing jobs over higher studies. “In recent times, companies have started choosing candidates with industry exposure of about two years, rather than candidates with fancy degrees. Students have quickly caught on to this fact, and have chosen to join companies for add-on experience, instead of studying further,” he said.
E Balaji, Managing Director and Chief Executive, Randstad India, said keeping in mind the difficult market conditions, students were trying to consolidate their position by taking on job offers that came their way. “Students no longer have the luxury of choosing from multiple job offers that were available to them earlier. This could explain the joining ratios rising in some companies,” he said.
According to industry estimates, if the current market conditions prevail, this trend would continue for the next few quarters. Some consultants say joining ratios could rise further if students start sensing the slowdown in the economy and the job market.
Source: Business Standard, August 5, 2012
Soon, AICTE to launch job portal, academic website
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon launch a first of its kind academic networking site, along with an in-house job portal and a repository of doctorate papers to check duplication and cheating. The academic networking site proposes to interconnect 7.5 million students enrolled across AICTE-approved institutions linked through email IDs. The yet to be christened networking site proposes to rope in faculty and industry stakeholders on to its database.
“The idea is to encourage academic networking and facilitate peer learning. That faculty will be accessible on this network, and help with course material, share charts, diagrams, data and projects that can aid learning, will make this an altogether knowledge building mechanism,” said the Chairman of AICTE, S S Mantha.
The AICTE is also readying Project Factory, a repository aimed at capturing abstracts of all post graduate projects in an online bank. These abstracts of research work will be available to industry stakeholders and research labs so that those interested can easily contact the student concerned and take it forward. “It will also help us check large-scale cheating and cut-copy-paste jobs that are seen in a number of research papers. A search engine on Project Factory will be able to quickly throw up abstracts of research works of interest to anyone,” Mantha added.
The AICTE e-governance project envisages an employment portal that proposes to store every student’s semester-wise results online and link it with his CV. This CV will automatically be forwarded to industry HRD heads whenever there is a vacancy suited to the student. This central database will link up with an industry database of 8,000 stakeholders and help facilitate the placement process.
On Thursday, the AICTE launched Live@edu — a hosted communication and collaboration service based on cloud computing — with Microsoft. Live@edu is a cloud suite that will offer email with a 10GB inbox, Microsoft Office Web applications, 25 GB of additional file storage, document sharing, video chat, mobile email and instant messaging to AICTE’s over seven million students and 500,000 faculty members.
Source: The Indian Express, April 16, 2012
It won’t be pouring big bucks at B-schools this time
Lessons in real life are often better than what’s taught in the classrooms, even if they happen to be at the country’s best B-schools. For students graduating in 2012, the real-time learning of managing their careers through economic volatility is the only consolation in what threatens to be a gloomy placement season across the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and at the Indian School of Business.
At least four IIM directors, two student heads of placement cells, recruitment managers, head-hunters and students told ET they expect fewer recruiters, fewer jobs and lower salaries when the placement season kicks off next month. They are bracing for the worst, and gently lowering expectations to cushion the impact on hundreds of students aspiring for dream jobs. Placing 350-odd students sitting for the final placements would be a challenge, admits Professor Amit Dhiman, IIM-Calcutta’s Placements Chairperson.
“I want to understand how far the slowdown will impact us this year,” says 24-yearold Vishal Sharma, a final-year student at IIM-Ahmedabad, flipping through a business magazine for articles on the slowdown. Batchmate R Sridhar is in touch with the alumni to gauge hiring sentiments across companies. The class of 2012 has seen global economic volatility at its worst. They sat for their entrance exams in late 2009, when the world economy was still reeling under the impact of the previous year’s financial crisis. They walked into the campus for the first day at school in June 2010, when the early hints of recovery were quite evident, at least in India. Those hopes have been belied as they prepare to pass out in a few months. “When we entered IIM-A in 2010, it was a good recovery year (after 2008 meltdown). But now when we are ready to enter the corporate world, there are fears of a double-dip recession,” says Sridhar.
“The number of Day Zero finance jobs, including those from investment banks, are likely to go down,” says Prof. Dhiman. “But not every sector is doing badly. Consulting companies have multiple job offers, as do IT, technology product companies.” Adds Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM-Kozhikode: “The number of companies visiting and offers being made will be conservative.”
FMCG and durables companies haven’t dropped out. They are coming to the campus, but they will recruit fewer students. “Some have said they are coming just to maintain their relationship on campus. They will recruit only 1 or 2 people,” says Dhiman. Some FMCG companies had hired 10-15 each last year. Pre-placement offers at IIM-Calcutta are down to 75 compared with 90-plus during the same time last year. Some Day 3, Day 4 companies have also dropped out.
Crore-Plus Salaries, Foreign Jobs Missing
“In 2009, we were banking on domestic offers. But this time, besides global offers, even the domestic ones will be affected,” adds Dhiman. IIM-Bangalore has been tempering the hopes of its students for some time now, not just this year. “The students are mature now and many of them come with work experience; they understand they may not get their dream job.
Not everything is rosy,” says Sapna Agarwal, head of career development services at the institute. The placement committee and faculty are trying to point students to other sectors that are equally good. “We have increased the bouquet of desirable companies. We are trying to help students understand the goodness of other industries (which may not have necessarily been part of their first choice),” says Agarwal.
Adds Ashish Dongre, an IIM-B PGP student, “The faculty is helping students come to terms with sustained recession.” The Rs, 1-crore (Rs. 10 million) salaries, foreign postings won’t happen. “Instead of only Ivy League companies, middle and smaller companies are offering challenging and equally competitive jobs. It’s right to bring down expectations,” says Dongre.
At IIM-B, 370 students will line up for placements this year. “Most recruiters are reserving judgement on the number of people they are planning to hire,” says Ashish Srivastava, placement committee member at XLRI-Jamshedpur. “Most will recruit less. If the market picks up later, they will hire more from the market.” “Consulting is looking fine, but finance is taking a hit. We are not sure about marketing yet, but no one seems to have any major expansion plans,” he adds. Earlier in November, companies were enthusiastic in picking first-year students for six-week internships, raising hopes of a strong hiring sentiment. But free interns are one thing; paid hires are another.
Campus insiders say many students have cancelled holidays from their year-end schedules. CVs are being reworked and social networks actively accessed for the latest buzz on hiring. At IIM-Ranchi, consumer-facing companies, including those in the FMCG and durables sector, have been affected and a couple of those that had originally planned to visit the campus have backed out.
“It would have been a problem if we had a larger batch, even 120 students. But since we are going into final placements with only 44 students, we are not worried,” says MJ Xavier, IIM-Ranchi Director. Institutes placing a large number of students will surely face problems, he says. The average salary will come down this year. “Those at the top of the class will still get good offers, but the average bunch will probably get a little less,” he says. How much less is the questions B-school grads are fretting about.
Source: The Economic Times, January 3, 2012
B-school students write off govt firms in good times
Public sector undertakings (PSUs), which helped business schools ensure good placements in the last two years, are getting a raw treatment this year. PSUs say with the economy back on track, the students are preferring private sector companies due to fatter pay packets. PSUs and nationalised banks, with their conservative salary structures, are losing out.
“The private sector increasingly made its presence felt this year, unlike the previous two years, when it was playing safe. PSUs and nationalised banks have been unable to compete on compensation,” said Prakash Pathak, Chairperson (Placements), Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad. In 2010, around 20 public sector companies visited IMT. This year, the number is seven.
While PSU banks such as Central Bank of India and Oriental Bank of Commerce are offering students Rs. 5-600,000 per annum, private banks like Citibank, Axis, ICICI and HDFC are paying over Rs. 1 million per annum.
The numbers are starker for Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B). In 2008-09, seven PSUs made 24 offers. This year, two PSUs have made two offers. Five PSUs offered 16 jobs last year. “Not only are PSUs and nationalised banks reducing recruitment, the students’ preferences are also shifting towards the private sector,” said Sapna Agrawal, Head – Career Development, IIM-B.
PSUs such as Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, GAIL, IOCL, NTPC, SBI Cap, SIDBI, SEBI, United Bank of India and Union Bank of India, which picked up the highest number of students from IIM-Ahmedabad (I
IM-A) in 2009, have recruited from other B-schools in good numbers this year. M.V. Nair, Chairman & Managing Director, Union Bank of India, said, “Now that the economy is picking up, we have not been able to pick up as many students from IIMs. They are preferring private sector companies.”
In 2009, PSUs and banks made good the gap left by the private sector due to economic slowdown. B-schools saw a 20-50 per cent increase in government companies visiting campuses. They recruited 40 students from IIM-A this year, with Union Bank among the top recruiters.
At Mumbai’s Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), only the Reserve Bank of India and Union Bank of India took part in final placements this year. In 2009, the institute was visited by 18 PSUs. Bank of Baroda, GAIL, ONGC, HPCL, SEBI, NISM and Union Bank of India were among the major PSU recruiters. About 17 per cent of the batch preferred to work with PSUs. In 2010, only four PSU came, according to the institute’s website. “We invited companies depending on student preferences. Many of them want to work with private sector companies,” said a JBIMS placement committee member. B-schools said PSUs would do well to go the private sector way.
“While PSU compensation packages may not be higher than those in the private sector, they tend to fail in terms of presentation. Private companies, on their part, make their packages lucrative by presenting them well to students. Moreover, this year there has been an increased inclination among students towards the private sector,” said a placement committee member at Xavier’s Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.
Source: Business Standard, May 11, 2011
>B.Com., B.Sc. students pip B-school grads to jobs
>
One of the most enduring family-room debates what should our child study is undergoing a transformation, probably led by the fact that the line between a once trite graduate course and an intense professional programme is blurring. Indian IT majors will probably tell you they were the first to discover the graduates when they invaded science colleges in Mumbai after facing a drought of programme coders. What started as a hunt for B.Sc. graduates about five years ago has not just picked pace, but also expanded.
Source: The Times of India, February 18, 2011
British job market bleak for fresh graduates
An estimated 500,000 British graduates are about to join the queue for jobs this year, but the market has become tougher with employers raising the bar for minimum education qualifications. Most employers in Britain will not be recruiting graduates with lower than a 2:1 pass degree, equivalent to a second class honours degree with 60 per cent marks or above. Latest research by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) reveals that eight out of 10 British employers have slapped a ban on recruiting anyone without a 2:1 degree because of the current job squeeze. The research, based on a survey of the job market for 2010, shows that at present there are 69 candidates on an average for each job. The survey, which took in 199 of the country’s largest graduate recruiters, said that they were offering 17,920 graduate jobs this year, 6.9 percent fewer than last year.
This year, 686,600 graduates have applied for jobs. They include 420,000 from the class of 2010. The remaining are those left unemployed from the class of 2009 and another 40,000 who failed to find jobs for two years in a row, the survey says. The AGR report expects the job market to plummet further.
The sectors facing the biggest drop in vacancies include fast-moving consumer goods — supermarket and consumer electronic goods — (down 45.4 per cent), IT and retail (both down 31.4 per cent). However, sectors seeing a rise in vacancies include banking and financial services (up 72 per cent after a massive collapse last year) and insurance (up 53.3 per cent).
Chief executive of AGR Carl Gilleard said on the company website: “Recruiters are under intense pressure this year dealing with a huge number of applications from graduates for a diminishing pool of jobs”. On the issue of the raised bar on educational qualifications, he said: “We are encouraging our members to look beyond the degree classification when narrowing down the field of candidates to manageable proportions”.
Universities minister David Willetts posted his reaction to the AGR survey on a government news website, News Distribution Service: “The job market remains challenging for new graduates, as it does for others. But a degree is still a good investment in the long term, and graduates have a key role to play in helping Britain out of the recession”.
Source: Hindustan Times, July 7, 2010
British job market bleak for fresh graduates
An estimated 500,000 British graduates are about to join the queue for jobs this year, but the market has become tougher with employers raising the bar for minimum education qualifications. Most employers in Britain will not be recruiting graduates with lower than a 2:1 pass degree, equivalent to a second class honours degree with 60 per cent marks or above. Latest research by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) reveals that eight out of 10 British employers have slapped a ban on recruiting anyone without a 2:1 degree because of the current job squeeze. The research, based on a survey of the job market for 2010, shows that at present there are 69 candidates on an average for each job. The survey, which took in 199 of the country’s largest graduate recruiters, said that they were offering 17,920 graduate jobs this year, 6.9 percent fewer than last year.
This year, 686,600 graduates have applied for jobs. They include 420,000 from the class of 2010. The remaining are those left unemployed from the class of 2009 and another 40,000 who failed to find jobs for two years in a row, the survey says. The AGR report expects the job market to plummet further.
The sectors facing the biggest drop in vacancies include fast-moving consumer goods — supermarket and consumer electronic goods — (down 45.4 per cent), IT and retail (both down 31.4 per cent). However, sectors seeing a rise in vacancies include banking and financial services (up 72 per cent after a massive collapse last year) and insurance (up 53.3 per cent).
Chief executive of AGR Carl Gilleard said on the company website: “Recruiters are under intense pressure this year dealing with a huge number of applications from graduates for a diminishing pool of jobs”. On the issue of the raised bar on educational qualifications, he said: “We are encouraging our members to look beyond the degree classification when narrowing down the field of candidates to manageable proportions”.
Universities minister David Willetts posted his reaction to the AGR survey on a government news website, News Distribution Service: “The job market remains challenging for new graduates, as it does for others. But a degree is still a good investment in the long term, and graduates have a key role to play in helping Britain out of the recession”.
Source: Hindustan Times, July 7, 2010
Green technology could help create 250,000 jobs
Symon Ross reports in Belfast Telegraph that wind and wave power could generate up to £70bn for the UK economy, according to a new report from the Carbon Trust. The report, which focuses on the economic benefit of new energy technologies, said that almost 250,000 jobs could be created by wind and wave power alone.
Part of the Trust’s Clean Tech Revolution campaign, the study concluded the UK could seize 45% of the global offshore wind market by 2020, delivering £65bn to the economy and 220,000 jobs by 2050. To do this will need at least £600m to be spent on research and development and new incentives to accelerate deployment of offshore wind power around British coasts.
The report also claimed that, with a quarter of the world’s wave technologies being developed in the UK, the country could generate revenues worth £2bn a year from the market and up to 16,000 direct jobs. Offshore wind and wave power can provide at least 15% of the total carbon savings required to meet the UK’s 2050 targets, it said.
The Carbon Trust report comes just a week after a group of Northern Ireland business organisations, charities and NGOs launched their vision of a ‘Green New Deal’. The group, which includes Friends of the Earth and the CBI NI, proposed measures to cut fossil fuels, improve home insulation, secure the energy supply and build a competitive low carbon economy. It estimated that 24,000 jobs could be created in the province if the government put its weight behind the green economy.
Read the complete report by Symon Ross on Belfast Telegraph website –
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/business-news/green-technology-lsquocould-help-create-250000-jobsrsquo-14381908.html.
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