Placement Woes: Mera Kya Hoga Sirji?

Are you one among those who have lived a chilled out, laid back feckless life for past few years as a student and now about to graduate in a year or half? Yes! Then I guess your mind might be buzzing with many questions like, “Mera Kya Hoga?” at least with respect to your job, placement and your career path ahead.In a recent report on jobs statistics released by the India’s largest job search engine Naukri.com, Kolkata has risen to the top as the only Indian metropolitan city which has registered positive growth with respect to the number of new openings that are being posted every day. The report which is a compilation of the number of jobs openings posted on the website in the seven major cities of the country, also states a 4% dip in the jobs posting in the Delhi-NCR Region as well. This is accentuated with most of the multinational software companies considering over 80% of the freshers to be inadequately equipped to join their companies.

A number of colleges in the Delhi-NCR region which exaggerate their placement statistics have something to worry about. The mass recruiters such as Infosys, TCS and other companies have either delayed their recruitment process or they have drastically reduced the job offers. In contrast to the 249 students, who were offered a job at Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology. Priyanka*, a final year student informed us that only 75 were placed this year. As you know, job offer is just intent to offer a job and the real thing is joining letter. To the astonishment of many, the students who were offered a job last year are still waiting for their joining letters and the rumors of the postponement of the joining date to March 2013 only adds to the misery. “We ar very worried about this situation with Infosys placements and we did not sit for the recruitment process of Infosys this year because of the delay in the joining date,” shares Priyanka*.

Are you a member of your college placement group on Facebook or Google groups? The posts over there show how students are worried their placement. While some renowned colleges like DCE, NSIT have a number of companies visiting their campus, thanks to their strong alumni base, there are few colleges where placement season this year has seen a drought. “Should we expect any company visiting our campus to recruit us or we will graduate unemployed?” asks Rahul who is a student from one such college. “Is it the time to talk to our relatives who are working at respectable positions to offer us a job?” he further asks sounding worried. You may understand the anxiety in their answers. As for Santhosh when asked about his job, he went on to say with a smile, “Mere papa ka to business hai” Though our government may not readily accept the real impact of the slowing economy, the paucity of jobs undoubtedly point to it. “No campus placement and pressure from parents makes you to feel that four years of engineering study was a waste!”, concludes Shwetang Agarwal, a final year student at Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Delhi.

What then is going to be the state of yet another batch of students who are going to graduate this year? Are they only going to add to the number of unemployed in India? Not all get lucky with their father’s business waiting to absorb them. May be its time to look for alternatives beyond corporate jobs? Want to know about alternatives? Here are a few alternative options for you.

* The names of all students in this story have been changed on request to maintain anonymity.

Author credit: Ashwin Aggarwal