Campus Hiring & Career Roadmap

Recently during one of the recruitment drives, I came across an interview evaluation and I was highly impressed with the resume, qualifications and big brand to back the aspiring young candidate. All pointing towards assured successful assessment, which made me look forward for meeting with the candidate.

The candidate arrived with an anxious face but opened up as discussions progressed, and took us back to his college campus hiring days. The candidate was one of the bright students of the college and managed to overcome the stringent norms of campus recruitment to finally bag an offer from his dream company to serve them.

The employment evaluation did not go through as per expectations and the obvious disappointment made me think beyond and go back to the basics of campus recruitment.

The campus recruitment is one of the best possible gateways for any youngster to land up in an organization which gives him a good footstep in early career and students look forward for such placements. With lots of hope, the youngsters join the organization and are required to undergo multiple trainings and evaluation, finally to be awarded and compartmentalized in one of the technologies which the organization deem perfect fit for the candidate.

Normally, such organizations are very professional and on their behalf do take due care to give confidence to recruitee regarding the projects, type of work, location as well as some soft skills boosters regarding multi culture fitment. However, many a times, the recruitees are found to be hesitant and low on morale as they realize that whatever they had learnt all through their undergraduate program with plans to build their career based on their learnings and there hardly is any correlation or connection with the education imparted to them. They wonder with the usage of degree, syllabus, all the hard slog of years to find themselves sharing cubicles with peers, who in no way match their background or aspirations but are deployed for the similar profile. The only common thread between them, is being confused with the education and job profile at hands.

Why does this disappointment happen ? Can this be avoided to have a better career roadmap for aspiring students ?

Isn’t it a time, the industry needs to address the overall career planning of the students. Shouldn’t the organizations and the industry as a whole revisit, rethink, reassess, revert to old days of fitting candidates according to their skills and education, rather than getting a bunch of talented youngsters and placing them according organization’s own assessment irrespective of the resource’s interest and liking.

Primarily the recruitment runs on few basic principles, which in my opinion should also be extended to campus recruitment :

1.Demand vs Supply Ratio :

a.  Every organization runs on an yearly roadmap and budget for hiring and has clear vision in terms of percentage of employees hired under campus program.

b. The organization is also aware of the Technology trends, Technical demands and skill requirements.

c. The same demand supply ratio needs to be in sync with institutes and target for recruitee should be mapped to educational streams along with percent allocation of count from each stream.

 2. Job Clarity and role expectations :

a.  Let the students know the criteria as well as have clarity about the job before they appear for campus hiring process. They can choose or let go an opportunity with a particular technology if the role/profile/technology is not as per their liking. This will avoid, post deployment heartbreak or mismatch of expectations from the job profile after being placed.

b. The choice would also help the student as well as the organization to come out with transparent roadmap for the hired students.

 3. Evaluation of skillsets for the right fit :

 a.  Cut off for the necessary skillsets during campus recruitment itself

b. Compartmentalize the fitments based on organization’s assessment of student during campus evaluation

c. Hiring post cutoff for particular technology will take care of Go/NOGO for the student as well as organization ( The technology training will happen as per regular process, post joining).

The concept and intentions of campus hiring have been very holistic and translucent all these years and many aspiring careers have taken off through this program. However in my opinion we need to make small adjustments to this program as the volume requirements have gone up and the student fraternity looking more focused and assured what they want to do with their careers.

Though its institute which ties up with organizations for campus hiring, the students also need to have their homework in place and need to reassess themselves and the opportunities offered.

The students :

1. Need to overcome the temptation of lucrative packages and revisit their own liking and where do they see themselves in professional life in few years down the line.

2. Should be clear with the type of companies and technologies or domain with whom they want to make a career with.

3.  Make a statement for himself through the skills and not through the numbers.

4.  Not to go with the flow and start learning to say NO as well, as this will make them stay true to themselves.

5.  Not be part of ocean, instead focus more on making a place for himself in this competitive professional world.

Let it not be a number game deployment, instead let it be right fitment. Else, sooner or later we would end up having bunch of qualified professionals working in monotonous and thankless jobs and not to forget, education and professional qualifications would only be required for employee files and ECNR stamps.

Time to awake, time to plan roadmap, time to give justice to young talent. Ultimately nation is built through its youngsters. Let’s build them first, so they build us again but this time more compact, more robust and long term .

P.S : The blog is written in a personal capacity and has picked up a story from past observations. It has nothing to do with any individual or any specific organization. The blog also does not assume that all the placements are mismatch and talks about some instances wherein wrong mapping of the candidates lead to displeasure or abandoning of the career path chosen by choice or default.

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- Jayawant

Debut Test : Hard Earned Cricket Cap

Shardul Thakur made debut for India today and became 294^th Test player to be capped for the nation, and unfortunately limped back to pavilion just after bowling 10 deliveries in his first outing on the pitch. When one looks back at year 1932, we realise it has been 86 years since India made its foray as an independent cricket playing nation and if we average out 294 cricketers on an yearly basis, roughly 3 cricketers get an opportunity to make it to national team every year. However, the reality is bleak when we count number of players having played more than 10 test matches and only 117 amongst those 294 have made it to the list. Only 30 test cricketers were fortunate to reach a milestone of 50 test matches.

All Indian cricketers have only one route to make it to top 15 players to be selected to represent the country and that is through Ranji Trophy (IPL though more of qualifies 20-20 or ODI players) and considering the fact that this domestic first-class cricket championship which is played in India consists of 37 teams, with all 29 states in India and two of the seven union territories having at least one representation, the competition is extremely tough.

Not all cricketers are born with golden spoon or privileged to have surroundings that make them pick up cricket bat or the red cherry. Many of them come from poor background and the only passion that makes them dream big is love for cricket courtesy their idols and probably due to the fact that cricket is amongst few games which does not require financial support at amateur level. Even sponge ball and any wooden plank can represent cricket bat at young age.

Due to some magician’s eyes and their hunger to teach the game, some of these boys get picked up by the coaches ( many don’t even formally qualify for the role of coach) and are introduced formally to the game of cricket. There begins the fight with self, expectations, future , compromising studies and coming across failures or partial success. Not everyone can cope with the pressures and lead a failed story to move away from the game.

Perseverance, patience, luck, age factor and such few parameters may make these boys play at domestic level and then the long wait begins in hope to pursue a national dream. Consistency, zonal policies, performing at every given opportunity and to be seen by national selectors and getting a national call is a path full of thorns which every cricketer ( for that matter, any sport which is played as team) has to go through. The competition is enough to make anyone burnt out in this entire process.

Those who pass this ‘Agnispariksha’ finally get a cap to represent the country and then the entire 1.30 billion of Indians have huge hopes pinned on the new debutant expecting a new Gavaskar, Kapil or Tendulkar to be born to take the Indian juggernaut ahead.

Isn’t it  tough for any youngster ( ideally most of them are in their 20s ) to bear this pressure and perform. Only blessed ones amongst them can perform from the word GO. Most of them would need time to settle, get accepted and start performing.

We as cricket fans, also need to look into the other side story of making it big in any profession. When the episodes of fixing, under performance or loosing crucial matches are discussed, we tend to crucify the cricketer and many times even hold their families responsible for their failures.

It’s time we start looking at the sport and performance of the players from this gruesome exercise perspective, else any youngster representing the country is bound to face heartbreaks and failures at the start of the career never to recover again.

Never forget the domestic giants like Amol Mujumdar, Rajinder Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar and such endless stalwarts who could never don the national duty and that dream blue cap.

Hope to see Shardul Thakur recovering from the early setback and make a place for himself in the long run. And may we need to keep remembering those 177 test players who played less than 10 test matches and those umpteen ones who could never play any.

P.S. The blog is written looking at the competition at highest level when it comes to represent the country for any individual and the pressures he or she has to go through to sustain at the top level. It does not comment on any individual, rules or authorities of the sport.

Feel free to share the blog.

-       Jayawant

Prithvi Shaw : A child prodigy coming of age !!

Not always is a platform, when a first shot at any new venture comes  across in surroundings that are conducive . It’s easier said than done that more challenging the opponent, more the test of talent. But not always !

That’s what is happening today with Prithvi Shaw, an amazing child prodigy making a debut for the country against an opponent which might help boost the form for any talented cricketer.

For years , India has struggled with opening pair except for few big names like Gavaskar-Chauhan/Srikkanth and then Viru-Gambhir but overall it has always depended on the middle order talent.

After a long time, bunch of youngsters are knocking the doors at the top slot and looking at the consistency shown by them at domestic level, chances of long term solution seem reality.

There’s something special with Shivaji Park. It always has proved to be the god’s boon for Indian cricket and with Shaw getting into Indian whites, the hopes for tradition to continue are high.

Shaw also comes with unique tradition of being a short heighted Mumbaikar (past greats are testimony to it) and to add to it making a debut against Windies take us back to  Gavaskar’s debut way back in 1971. Hopefully, we are in queue to see some great future ahead.

One thing is for sure, we should be patient with the debutant and give him a long rope to prove himself at the international level.

What the domestic cricket ‘saw’ in ‘Shaw’, it’s time to ‘see’ at international forum.

Welcome another Mumbaikar !! 

Welcome Prithvi on grounds !! 

Feel free to share the blog.

- Jayawant