The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : And now, jobs in search of candidates?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 18, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

And now, jobs in search of candidates?

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI, OCT. 17. Instead of candidates searching for jobs, the jobs themselves may come searching after them, if a Anna University proposal works out.

Anna University's Vice Chancellor E. Balagurusamy, went on record some time ago saying that his office, along with the Centre for University-Industry Collaboration, is working on a proposal to create a "State-wide placement cell" to benefit students spread across the State.

Several big recruiters have also agreed to the idea.

Cornering jobs

Tamil Nadu has nearly 250 engineering colleges, including private, government colleges and deemed universities.

However, when it comes to placement, institutions closer to urban centres or those with an enviable academic record corner a chunk of jobs, especially in the growing info-tech sector.

Prof. Balagurusamy made out a case for making the placement process more dispersed so that students of all colleges can benefit from the campus recruitment services.

His rationale: students in remote corners of the State are achieving some of the best ranks and results.

"In the last examination, we found dozens of students from hitherto little-known colleges getting top ranks, including within the first 10 ranks," notes professor Mannar Jawahar.

A month ago, the university held a meeting of top companies to discuss the idea.

It was agreed that the companies could send their recruiting teams round the State to conduct campus interviews and tests and recruit freshers.

However, company representatives felt they may not be able to visit each college.

An idea getting fine-tuned runs like this: Recruiting teams will hold `placement/recruitment camps' in at least four places — Chennai, Coimbatore Madurai and Tiruchi — on given dates.

Before that the companies want to look at the academic record of the potential recruits. When contacted, Prof. Jawahar who now heads the CUIC, said the university had written to the colleges and "we are receiving good response from 75 per cent of the colleges." The colleges have been asked to send the academic record of students in the first six semesters.

The exercise, it is hoped, will help the rural engineering colleges also to reap the benefits of the campus recruitment so far enjoyed by Anna University's constituent colleges alone.

Latest statistics on campus recruitment in the university's four constituent colleges:

Electronics and Communication Engineering - 90 per cent; Computer Sciences and Engineering - 91 per cent; Information Technology - 87 per cent; Mechanical Engineering - 72.8 per cent; Electrical and Electronics Engineering - 77.59 per cent; and Electronics and Instrumentation - 88.24 per cent.

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