FINAL YEAR EPIDEMIC - "PlacemeNxiety"

PLACEMENT TIME! HURRAY!!! “Ahem Ahem (cough cough)”… Sorry! That’s nowhere near the real story.

As we enter the final year of our undergraduate studies we are not only looking forward to complete the course but also to secure a major part of our future through placements. The companies coming in have a sole purpose – to get the best possible candidate as an employee. Similarly, a student wishes to get the best possible company as an employer. If the interests on either side are as complimentary as they seem; then why do students face an unexplained anxiety regarding placements year after year? The answer lies in the role played by the “Placement Cell”…er…role NOT played by the “Placement Cell”.

Even if we rank among the best in India, why is it that many reputed companies do not recruit from our university? Why is it that a new company is hardly seen in our campus? The answer---the Placement cell lacks the foresight and planning.

It is the duty and the responsibility of the Placement Cell to see to the fact that their students get placed; but their job mustn’t end there. The endeavour of the Placement Cell should be to ensure best possible future for the candidates. Otherwise a Placement Cell is no different from a ‘Telephone Exchange’ or ‘Post Office’—making frantic calls or sending official letters to various companies asking whether they would come for recruitments or not. Unfortunately, in our University they fail to understand this which results not only in a scrappy placement system but also in considerable harassment of our students. New rules are flashed as-and-when required without putting in an iota of serious thinking. In the meantime companies keep coming in while most of the students are still apprehensive about their next BIG STEP. What needs to be done is to provide one-on-one counseling sessions to each student and assess his/her performance to create a database regarding individual field of interest and competency. The student should then be given information regarding various companies where he/she might excel as per the assessment done before. This will give the student an opportunity to be aware of all that is on offer and to seriously consider his/her options (as a PPT isn’t really enough to know everything). The result should be compiled and sent to the Placement Cell where the review of such a list would give them an idea of the recent trend i.e. in which sector/industry are the students most interested in. Subsequent efforts should be made to bring in more companies from that sector, new contacts have to be made and companies have to be made aware that we have what they want. This would result in students’ satisfaction and also raise our demand among various industries.

That’s just some of the things that may be done. I am sure many more ways exist. If it’s not the duty of Placement Cell to look for them; what is their job in their comfy chairs? The placement co-ordinators try their best to persuade those people into some constructive action but they turn a blind eye irrespective of the seriousness of the matter. Until and unless those important people understand the crisis themselves our placement procedure would continue to be in a sorry state. A review of this whole century-old system is necessary, the sooner the better.