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Day One: It's jubilation time for the lucky ones at The Hindu job fair

Staff Reporter

15,000 youngsters turn up for The Hindu Opportunities Fair

WHEN OPPORTUNITIES COME CALLING: At The Hindu Opportunities Fair in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday. — Photo: S. Gopakumar

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: From Bellary and Bangalore, Madurai and Mysore and all over Kerala, they have come in their thousands. On Saturday, they lined up for hours braving the sunshine. The anticipated reward? A cushy job in the information technology (IT) or IT-enabled services sector.

The venue was St. Joseph's Higher Secondary School in the city and the event The Hindu Opportunities Fair-2006

At 9.30 a.m., the first of the job-seekers walked into the indoor stadium of the school. Though jobs were the first thing on their minds, the candidates who entered the stadium, transformed beyond recognition, were awestruck by the visual spread before them.

The wide-eyed hopefuls took in the advertisement boards, ran their eyes past plasma screens flashing catchy logos of companies and cocked their ears at corporate films luring them to various stalls. After all, it is not easy to decide between 24 IT/ITES companies.

A good majority of the 15,000-odd candidates were `freshers.' Quickly, they realised that three or four companies were looking seriously at freshers, while the rest had their eye on those with at least some years of work experience. Soon, serpentine queues formed in front of the stalls where these firms had set up shop. The company personnel busied themselves with answering unending queries from the candidates.

Before they knew it, many candidates had made it past the preliminary screening and were writing tests or attending interviews.

By noon, the rush of candidates had become so great that the `freshers' queue stretched halfway down the road leading from the General Hospital junction to Statue.

The rush of candidates, however, did nothing to diminish the ordered manner in which the fair progressed; a point that was not lost on the personnel of different companies. Manay Mahaom, who heads the IT recruitment team of Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), the event sponsor, was all praise for the discipline shown by the candidates.

"They didn't mind it when they were asked to wait for some time. Their conduct was superb," he told The Hindu . Mr. Mahaom said though that many candidates who approached him did not seem to want to move out of Thiruvananthapuram or Kerala. Needless to say, the lucky ones who landed jobs at the fair were ecstatic. P. Babu, a native of Tamil Nadu, was snapped up by the CTS early on. An MCA who is now working in a Technopark firm, Babu could not hide his glee when he told The Hindu how happy and satisfied he had become.

Similar glee was found in the faces of those recruiting for WINS Infotek, a firm that short-listed 20 candidates and gave firm offers to five. "We were looking for some niche talent and we found it in some candidates who hail from Bihar and now study at Cusat [Cochin University of Science and Technology]," said the company's chief executive officer T.K. Velayudham.

True, there were many `freshers' who were disappointed that they could only submit their CVs. But for most others, the disappointment was more than compensated for by assurances from the companies that they would look into the CVs and short-list candidates for tests or interviews.

When the fair closed at about 5.30 p.m., anticipation was still much in the air; the hope that `opportunities' might come calling again, tomorrow.

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