Experts participating in The Hindu Education Plus Career Counselling session organised in Mysuru on Saturday, May 11, described the global slowdown in hiring by Information Technology (IT) sector as a “temporary phenomenon”.
Addressing the concern among the students and young engineering graduates about the lull in recruitment, the Principal of Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE) Prof. Sadashiva Gowda and Recruitment Trainer and Career Counsellor Asgar Pasha expressed optimism that the demand for manpower by the IT industries will surge soon after the “temporary” phase passes off.
Prof. Gowda identified geo-political reasons like the wars between Russia and Ukraine and the other parts of the globe, besides the political uncertainty due to the impending elections in the U.S. and ongoing elections in India among the reasons for the hiring slowdown in IT companies.
Investors would not be ready to put their money due to the risk of losing it in an uncertain political atmosphere. The downturn in recruitment is only a temporary phase, he said before adding that a “boom” in the job market can be expected after the conclusion of elections in the U.S., scheduled for November 2024 by when elections in India would also have been completed.
Such a slowdown in hiring was cyclical and comes every 8 to 10 years when new tools and technologies are introduced in the IT sector. The present lull, which also coincides with the advent Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (IT) technology, will make it imperative for the students to upgrade and upskill themselves to suit the requirement of the industry, he said.
Earlier, addressing the students, Prof. Gowda advised the students aspiring for a career in engineering to carefully choose the criteria to be adopted while choosing colleges. He asked them to consider infrastructure, faculty, placement, location, ranking/reputation, cut-offs (cut-ins), teaching-learning, curriculum, co-curricular/extra-curricular activities, industry-academia collaboration, and feedback before choosing the engineering college.
Out of the 2,857 engineering colleges in the country, Karnataka was home to 208 including 11 in Mysuru.
While the 208 engineering colleges offered 1,20,000 seats, the 11 engineering colleges in Mysuru cumulatively offered around 6,000 seats. Information Technology (IT) branches accounted for 3,000 while the non-IT branches accounted for the remaining 3,000 seats. A total of 13,000 students from Mysuru had appeared Common Entrance Test (CET) for admission to engineering colleges, he said.
While 45 per cent of the seats were allocated to the Government quota to be filled up through CET, 30 per cent will be filled up through COMED-K examinations. Another 25 per cent will be filled up by the management.
Nodal officer, Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) Helpline, Mysuru, N. Udayashankara, sought to clarify that the students securing seats in quotas for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) were not eligible for any concession in fees. Concession is fees is limited only to students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, he clarified.
As income certificates were valid only for a period of 5 years, he called upon the students and parents to check for the validity of the income certificates before submitting the same to the KEA.
