Despite her anxiety about entering the job market in a few days, Sunitha P is not overtly optimistic. The 23-year-old, who has just completed her engineering degree, has to be content with a modest pay package of Rs 90,000 per annum at a call centre.
For someone who has time and again heard about engineering graduates getting upwards of Rs 1.5-2 lakh per annum as starting salaries, Rs 7,500 per month — about half that income — looks too small an income.
However, Sunitha says she is lucky to have at least got this job, as several of her classmates from her engineering institute in Davangere, about 265 km from Bangalore, are still scouting left, right and centre for one.
She says that even though various surveys suggest the job market is improving and hiring is thriving again, the situation in tier III towns and institutes is still gloomy.
“There were hardly 4-5 firms this time at my institute who made offers to just a handful of students. Salaries are more or less similar to what I have been offered,” says Sunitha.
Sailing in the same boat is Namit Kumar, whose MBA institute in Cuttack, Orissa, mostly lay barren as far as placements were concerned.
Namit was lucky to have got a sales job in a retail firm as a result of his own job hunt, for a monthly income of Rs 5,500, minuscule compared to what students from reputed institutes get.
“The entire course fee for two years was nearly Rs 4 lakh, but after spending so much, all I get is peanuts,” complains Kumar.
Namit and Sunitha’s story is a grim reality despite talk of jobs and fancy salaries brimming all over again.
Of the 4,000 engineering institutes and approximately 1,600 business schools affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), hundreds and thousands of the not-so famous institutes and their students have to grapple with low salaries or a no job scenario.
Kris Lakshmikanth, founder CEO and MD, of Bangalore-based recruitment firm HeadHunters India, says this trend of freshers getting starting salaries of less than Rs 1 lakh per annum is quite common. “It’s generally smaller firms which would go to lesser-known institutes. And they would not pay very good salaries. Salaries given to students from the tier I institutes are way apart from what a majority get.”
HO Agarwal, director at a management institute in Uttar Pradesh, said that when very limited recruiters visit campuses in semi-urban areas, students have no choice but to take up whatever comes their way.
Professor A H Chachadi from Kousali Institute of Management Studies in Karnataka, said colleges have do a lot of groundwork by networking with recruiters to establish credibility of the institutes and students. “Recruiters are not really aware of colleges in smaller towns; hence first we have to build a rapport with them,” he said.
Chachadi added that talent at smaller institutes is affected by a dearth of quality faculty.
“Institutes are growing rapidly. However, faculty with a good academic and industry experience is hard to find. This affects output and faith of recruiters is shaken.”
Rishi Das, co-founder and CEO of Bangalore-based talent acquisition firm CareerNet Consulting said that usually, students settle for salaries of Rs 5,000 then work hard, gain whatever experience they can, and start hunting for jobs with bigger organisations.
No comments:
Post a Comment