The big deal

ON OFFER Students graduating from the Arts, Commerce and Science streams are being offered hefty starting salaries in campus placements. The big selling points, say companies, are their soft skills and analtyical capabilities

There’s a rapidly growing number of positions that require data crunching or analysis, for which students from maths, statistics and economics backgrounds are well-equipped. DEVASHISH SHARMA, founding member of HR consultancy PeopleStrong

It’s not just engineering, management and law. Highly paid campus placements offers are now being made in fields beyond the professional and technical courses, to students graduating in arts, science and commerce too.

ISTOCK

This year, a final-year Economics student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College received a salary offer of Rs 38 lakh (all salary figures are per annum); last year a Commerce student from Sriram College of Commerce (SRCC) got a starting offer of Rs 31 lakh. In Mumbai, arts and commerce students got offers averaging Rs 6 lakh, with the highest going up to Rs 19 lakh.

Companies are offering better packages because they would rather hire young people who are easy to train than experienced people who need to unlearn practices and come with a higher price tag, says Smita Sharma, placement advisor at SRCC.

Another big draw is the fact that these students tend to be equipped with good soft skills.

The average engineering student, for instance, is less likely to have good communication skills, says Devashish Sharma, founding member of India’s largest HR Technology and Talent Acquisition solutions company PeopleStrong. “There’s a rapidly growing number of positions that require data crunching or analysis, for which students from maths, statistics and economics backgrounds are well-equipped,” says Soni George, placement convener at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. “Students from other departments are also eligible to apply for these. We have had students from life sciences take up analyst jobs too.”

At both Xavier’s and SRCC, campus recruitment picked up around 2004-2005 and has been growing steadily since. “This year, we added 20 more companies. Some startups have started coming to campus too. Though they don’t offer huge pay packages, they do offer a lot of exposure,” says Smita Sharma, placement advisor at SRCC.

The brighter job prospects in these subjects have now allowed more students to choose freely when it comes to picking a stream. “I chose economics because I really wanted to study the subject. I did not even know whether I wanted to do a job right after college or not,” says Yashovat Saharia, who graduated from SRCC in 2017. He received among the highest salary offers of his year, according to his college, and has worked with that company, Parthenon EY, ever since.

Saharia says he doesn’t plan to study economics further but he’s glad he picked it to begin with. “I now firmly believe that one should study the subject one likes and not look for one with ‘better job prospects’ because it gives you a strong foundation when you specialise in one field,” he says. At Parthenon EY, his job is that of a senior associate; it involves crunching data to explain to companies why a deal or acquisitions is or isn’t a good idea. “My background in economics and my grooming in presentations made me both good with numbers and capable of communicating what those numbers say, effectively,” Saharia says. Economics has been on the top of recruiters preference for a long time but now recruitments in good honours courses in both sciences and humanities have a lot of takers too, says Sharma of PeopleStrong. “Whereas campus recruitment for general science courses are increasing in fields like pharmaceuticals and chemical research, in the humanities and social sciences there is a rise in recruitment from among psychology students, by corporates and institutions like hospitals and schools. Also, the services side of new age Internet companies are employing humanities graduates with good communication skills in their customer support teams,” Sharma adds.

Source: Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition) e paper dated 20 March, 2019.

IT returns at city engineering colleges: More jobs, high pay

HIRING SEASON Major information technology firms offer ₹40L package a year

MUMBAI: After a two-year slump, the city’s engineering colleges are seeing a rise in offers and pay packages from information technology (IT) companies, with some even touching ₹40 lakh.

While IT firms such as Accenture, Larsen and Toubro (L&T) Infotech, Capgemini and Infosys are hiring students in bulk, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro opted for a pan-India centralised recruitment process.

“We are witnessing a surge in demand for IT and computer science graduates compared to last year. There has been an unusual growth in packages, which wasn’t seen in the past decade,” said Gopakumaran Thampi, principal, Thadomal Shahani Engineering College (TSEC), Bandra.

Here’s an example: Accenture made 178 offers at the KJ Somaiya College of Engineering this year, up from 130 and 140 offers in 2016-17 and 2017-18, respectively. The recruitment figure for the company was much higher – 301 – in 2015-16.

At Thakur College of Engineering and Technology (TCET), Kandivli, Accenture offered 150 jobs. Last year, the company didn’t visit the college, as it didn’t want to share the sought-after first day of placements with Infosys. MH Saboo Siddik College of Engineering (MHSSCOE), Byculla, saw L&T Infotech and Wipro, both of whom were absent last year, making offers to their students this year.

Several students received attractive international packages, especially from Japanese firms. Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing company, recruited students for software profile from at least three colleges – MHSSCOE, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology (VIT), Wadala, and Sardar Patel Institute of Technology (Andheri) – offering between ₹37.5 lakh to ₹39 lakh an annum. Works Applications, a Japanese enterprise resource management (ERP) firm, made three offers of ₹37 lakh each at TSEC.

The packages, too, have gotten better. At TSEC, the number of students receiving at least ₹5 lakh an annum doubled to around 100. At TCET, TCS and Infosys offered salaries between ₹8-10 lakh, up from the highest ₹7 lakh offered last year.

In addition to their regular job profile, which pays around ₹3.5 lakh to freshers, some of the mass-recruiting IT firms such as Infosys and Cognizant offered another job profile of ₹6.5 lakh package at Sardar Patel Institute of Technology. One of the students at the college was offered ₹40 lakh per annum, including stock options and other perks, by software giant Microsoft.

According to experts, the growth in new technologies and bagging of lucrative contracts and investments by IT services firms has contributed to the renewed boom in hiring.

“The improvement in the IT recruitment is mainly owing to development in new areas, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud and data, collectively known by the acronym ABCD,” said Braj Mishra, principal, TCET.

Kamal Karanth, founder, Xpheno, a Bengaluru-based specialist staffing firm, said, “For the past two to three years, IT companies were running on a thin batch, filling only 70% of their workforce requirement. The recruitment has gone up in the past four-five months. The arrival of guaranteed investment certificates (GICs) in the country and large contracts bagged by some of the companies in the past six years are the other factors.”

Source: Hindustan Times dated 18 March, 2019

Skills needed for future job market

India finds itself at a unique advantage when compared to other nations due to its young population. However, a young population is both an opportunity as well as a problem depending on how the advantage is utilised to boost the economy. The rapidly growing population indicates the urgent need for skill development in order to enable the growing population to have meaningful employment. An education that places an emphasis on imparting skills over rote learning and memorisation is necessary to ensure that the youth are gainfully employed.

For India to maintain its stature of being the largest provider of skilled programmers and technologists, we will have to ensure that its populace is skilled accordingly so as to remain competitive in the global arena. What follows are five important skills that will continue to be in high demand in the Indian job market in the years to come.

CODING

Coding or programming in languages such as Javascript or Python has consistently been a skill that is in high demand. Many companies in the past few years have produced both hardware and software that feature augmented reality and machine learning. Individuals who possess the skills required to create, design and refine applications that make the most of these technologies and application programming interfaces, will be able to consistently secure rewarding employment.

MACHINE LEARNING

Machine learning (ML) being a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has proved itself to be one of the most important technological developments in the last few years as it facilitates algorithms and programes to continually learn and improve their efficiency with time. Individuals possessing a sound understanding of machine learning will ensure that they become integral components of both emerging and established corporations.

MOBILE DEVELOPMENT

Companies are constantly in need of mobile applications that make their product or service accessible to the growing target audience. An exciting direction in which mobile applications are currently headed in is integrating technologies such as augmented reality like Pokémon Go. Applications such as these blend elements from the environment around users making the content appearing on screen more engaging.

SEO/SEM

Companies are constantly on the lookout for individuals with digital marketing skills in order to be able to better their presence and visibility across the internet. This skill has an obvious advantage as greater exposure to users across the internet would result in more customers and thus revenue.

CYBER-SECURITY SPECIALISTS

It is no surprise that cybersecurity and information security are one of the highest paying and most wanted skillsets. Ransomware attacks such as WannaCry along with hardware vulnerabilities that were exhibited in MeltdownandSpectrehave become the new norm in modern society. As the world continues its reliance on outsourcing services such as cloud computing providers, coupled with internal networks that are vulnerable, the need for businesses to staff a skilled security team is of utmost importance.

These emerging skillsets will be evolving at an exponential pace and wrapping one’s head around them to stay ahead of the curve is essential. A young population can only become an asset if sufficient job opportunities are created and the youth is skilled enough to meet the aspirations of the populace.

The government has struck the right cords with ‘Skill India’ and ‘Make in India’ as well as providing the policy framework under ‘Ease of Doing Business’. However, a lot more needs to be done if we are to fully utilise youth potential. With focus on acquiring the required skillsets, the possibilities that lie before a youthful India are unlimited.

(The author is founder of Indian Institute of Digital Education)

Source: The Time of India dated March 4, 2019