Rahul Gupta and Hardik Makkar, Founders, iitjobs.in

Career opportunities for IIT graduates have been in a slump for a while now. The latest campus placements only accommodated 50% of the graduates, which means that the other half were left jobless. Rahul Gupta and Hardik Makkar decided to help their brethren by employing their entrepreneurial skills. We spoke to Rahul about how they and iitjobs.in intend to help these graduates. He says “iitjobs.in is an online platform to provide career opportunities to IITians and graduates from other premiere schools in India. The motivation to start it came this January when campus placements in IITs left over 50% students jobless. iitjobs.in was started to provide students with off campus placement opportunities. Every IIT has a Student Placement Office which facilitates placements from campus. iitjobs.in aims to act as a permanent placement office for not only facilitating job opportunities for final year students but also those who have graduated in yester years.”

“Employers and Job consultants can post jobs for free on the site and users can view and apply to them directly at no cost.”

If you think that there may not be many takers for this the facts beg to differ. Rahul states “Currently we average around 1000 hits a day which is rising consistently. We have received a huge number of resumes that have been submitted on the site by the users. These are sent to employers at regular intervals.”

With a focus on quality over quantity, they dedicate to finding the right kind of job for the discerning graduate. Rahul elaborates saying “We wanted to strictly differentiate ourselves from other job sites wherein thousands of jobs are posted everyday. iitjobs.in focuses on quality jobs which are targeted towards graduates from premiere schools. We thus aim to remove the clutter of the thousands of jobs so that the user doesn’t have to go about searching for the needle in a haystack.”

Their strategy for growth is also simple and easily deployable. Rahul plans to use the credibility that they amass, as well as tap the alumni network of various IIT’s.

For the IIT graduate turned entrepreneur the choices were simple, he says “It is always exciting to create something new and create something that adds value. We realized this back in our IIT days and found the same excitement lacking in the regular 9-5 jobs.The biggest challenge is to let go off the inertia that hinders you to take the plunge. The transition from the idea to the implementation stage has an activation barrier that needs to be crossed. Luckily for me I found my friend Hardik who was very enthusiastic about the project. His enthusiasm let us both make iitjobs.in a reality.”

Rahul further states his reason for pursuing entrepreneurship saying “The joy of creation and waiting for the morning to come so that you can wake up and do great things everyday.”

“The seed capital to setup the sight was around Rs. 3000. Luckily we found it in our own pockets. This was used to setup the site and run a small banner based ad campaign in IIT Kanpur.”

Every single job slot they fill through the site is a noteworthy achievement. Sometimes they even attract the off beat kind of employers. Rahul reminisces “We were mighty amused when we got a job posting wherein an IITian was required for sperm donation. To top this, the post asked for candidates to apply with their transcripts. And there is more- Rs. 20k was offered for the whole procedure. We obviously did not post the job on the site but had a mighty laugh.” Their good work has been noticed by those that matter, Rahul says “It is great to hear friends from IIT talk good things about the site. That is the way we would like to be recognized. They appear all surprised when they come to know that we started it.”

To those entrepreneurs contemplating their choices, Rahul advises “Take the plunge. You cover half the distance as soon as you start. You cannot keep waiting to be sufficiently experienced to startup just as you can’t learn how to swim before plunging in.”

We hope Rahul and Hardik continue to help employ more people and establish themselves as the premier job locater for IIT graduates across the country.