Attitude isn't quite everything when it comes to being successful, but attitude does play a part, virtually in every phase of your life. A positive attitude gets people jobs and helps them keep those jobs! If we go by the recent industry response, according to Mr. N. Chandrasekran, CEO-Tata Consultancy Services, even 2014 batch students may experience poor hiring as the after effects of the extended recession.

• Stop making unrealistic decisions: Students must realize that there is a huge world outside the 'Big 4 I.T Majors' where their initial learning curve could be faster than they expect in the 'Big 4'. The National Employability Report by Aspiring Minds revealed that only 17 percent of engineering graduates in the country are employable. What is alarming to note is the fact that the rest 83 percent are unemployable!


• The student should do a SWOT Analysis and work upon his/her area of weakness: For instance, for C.S/I.T students, knowledge of C, C++ is a pre-requisite but they must add further impetus by taking training in other technologies/domain. Students in core streams should hone up respective core competencies.
• Participate, Compete: Students who regularly participate in technical quizzes and contests have higher chances of getting placed. Participation in such contests hones critical thinking, problem-solving and innovative skills, and thus they even have a tendency to perform well, at least during the initial stages of their career.
• Have a Plan B ready: It is quite a possibility that your plan to work in a big I.T firm may fail, bring out your plan B - may be working in a start up, or a small company, get the exposure and then look for the bigger companies, may be after a year or two or go for higher studies. Students should also be willing to relocate for the job.

 "Students should take pride in their profession. They should not look only at remuneration and profile. The reward for an engineer is the satisfaction of doing a job well and watching technology change lives for the better, it's the passion and not the remuneration that will keep you driven."

Sandeep Dutta, Head-Training and Placement
B.P. Poddar Institute of Management and Technology, Kolkata

"We all talk about lack of jobs, employable skills, trainability etc. but often tend to neglect students' concerns. Students are bearing the brunt - be it from the campus (to grab the highest package) or the industry. Students who come from the rural or semi-urban areas of the country are the worst hit. Not only they have to compete for good grades, they often face difficulty to build effective communication skills. Peer pressure, societal pressure, performance pressure and the list is endless.

Being the campus faculty, our main responsibility is to create an effective support system for the students. They must be trained to handle such pressures and learn some basic life skills.

Some of the behavioral aspects a student must focus are as follows:

We need to increase our capacity to cope up with the ever-changing need of technological businesses.

Avijit Das
Camelia Institute of Technology, Kolkata

India is producing thousands of engineers and management graduates every year but if we look at the statistics then out of this vast pool, how many of these are employable? I guess not everybody.

Even students who are from the same college - only 30% of them get pay-packages according to the current industry standards; others have to settle at a much lower remuneration. The reason behind this huge gap is because students lack focus – they are not sure of the industry and the job profile they want to make their career in, whether it is I.T industry/Semiconductor Industry or the PSUs. The educational institutions could help students by making them aware of their strengths and weaknesses and consequently the next step would be to strengthen skills they are good at; that is critically important.

There's nothing in the industry that one can categorize as a 'Good Job' and a 'Bad Job'; and thus even if one gets a pay-check with a lesser amount than what one had expected, one need not be disheartened. Sky is the limit for those who do their job with 100% dedication!

Mr. Baidyanath Panigrahi
Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Orissa