The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : For many aspirants search for a plum job ends here

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 25, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

For many aspirants search for a plum job ends here

Meera Srinivasan and Vani Doraisamy

42 high-end companies put up stalls; of 50,000 candidates turned up for spot recruitment 200 students found berth on day one

ALL UNDER ONE ROOF: There was a massive turnout at the Hindu Opportunities Fair at Chennai Trade Centre, Nandambakkam on Saturday. Elevated space was set apart for spot interview (right) at the venue. — Photos: S.R. Raghunathan

Meera Srinivasan

and Vani Doraisamy

CHENNAI: It was quite a long journey for Renuka Vallarapu from Eluru, a small town in Andhra Pradesh, to suburban Nandambakkam in Chennai. Unable to catch a train due to heavy rain, she had travelled by bus till Vijayawada and then by train to Chennai.

Renuka would not regret the hardship one bit. She was one of the first candidates to land a plum job on the first day of The Hindu Opportunities Fair on Saturday. She was the first to be picked up by Cognizant Technology Solutions, the principal sponsor. And Renuka can celebrate in style: she also won a holiday package at GRT Grand Days, for being the Information Technology major's first recruit.

Renuka's is only one of the many success stories the Chennai edition of the two-day fair generated on the first day. Many more would follow, with thousands of jobs available for the asking and 42 high-end companies pitching up their stalls.

More than 80,000 job aspirants registered online and 50,000 had turned up for spot recruitments. The crowds kept coming throughout the day.

G.K. Kalidasan, vice-president, HR & Legal, ISG Novasoft, said the response was "`phenomenal."

"Around 200 candidates were recruited on the first day. If their average annual salary was Rs. 3 lakhs, it would mean companies have made decisions worth Rs. 6-crore in a couple of hours. It would have otherwise taken us 15 days to recruit 15 people", he said. ISG Novasoft alone made 30 offers on Saturday.

At Cognizant Technology Solutions' futuristic-looking split-level stall too, there were smiles all around.

A fruitful day

Having made 180 recruitments, 60 of them by noon, the firm's 250 employees who were manning 50 separate interview panels had had a fruitful day.

"While 125 recruitments were of experienced professionals, 25 were freshers and 30 were a mix of both for jobs in testing, client-server, J2EE and infrastructure services, in addition to MBAs with industry experience,'' said R. Ramkumar, director, Corporate Marketing and Communications. Cognizant was hoping to make more recruitments on Sunday too.

For Rajesh Patro, HR manager, Infosys and Suresh Mani, HR manager, Verizon Data Services, the response was much better than they had expected. This was the fifth time Patni Computer Systems was participating in The Hindu Opportunities Fair. "We have built up a good database of resumes for future reference," said Augustine Dilip, head-in-charge, Patni.

S. Aravamudhan from Kancheepuram could not have asked for anything better. Just out of college and armed with 30 copies of his resume, he had turned up as early as 7 a.m. After a determined round of the stalls, he had no room for complaint: he had managed three different offers for a sales executive's job.

While Cognizant Technology Solutions is the main sponsor and iGATE Global Solutions, Verizon and e-Serve are associate sponsors, Blue Shift is the technology partner and Sabols is the mineral water sponsor. With Sunday promising to bring in more crowds, the smiles can only get bigger.

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