Placement Trends on Campuses In India

Recent industry reports suggest that India is back on the track in terms of employee hiring and campus placements. A recent study undertaken by ASSOCHAM Research Bureau finds that campus placement trends are positive as compared to last year.

D.S. Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM, says, “The job creation is happening at all levels including senior, middle & junior management and executives. Even in the engineering and management colleges the campus placement trends are positive as compared to the last year trends.”

Rigorous recruitments are on across campuses in India. Demand is high in all major industry areas including IT/ IT enabled services (ITES), manufacturing, textile, real estate, agriculture, infrastructure, aviation, and academics. However areas like Telecom, FMCG, Banking, and Logistics sectors shows slight decline in job creation.

Academics recorded the largest share of vacancies posted in metro cities in India. There is huge demand for teachers and professors in schools and universities. Professors in engineering and management are in huge demand in private institutes.

In terms of job creation IT sector outnumbered all others. Despite there is dip in EBIDTA margins companies are keen to recruit at all levels, indicating that economy is stabilizing in India. The majority of campus recruitments at four metro cities in India were in IT/ITES followed by IT/Hardware sector. A majority share of this comes from campus recruitments.

Every year India adds 10 million new jobs in different verticals. The sheer size of the recruitment industry means that organizations have to allot huge resources for recruiting, training, quality assessment and retaining of their employees. Despite these investments, in-house recruitment may not bring the desired results due to lack of right mapping of the candidates.

Campus recruitments have been the intelligent choice for all types of companies – SMEs and large enterprises – looking for talented candidates. This process not only reduces recruitment costs but also helps the companies identify the right candidate suitable for their placement needs.

Technology is playing a significant role in reducing the costs associated with campus recruitments. With the advent of social media and latest communications technologies, recruiters are able to pick the right candidates cost effectively, right from their desktop or laptop.

The latest buzz in campus recruitments is video resumes. Several leading manpower solution providers are offering video recruitment services to prospective employers to enhance campus recruitments. Koozba, the first and only video based job portal for fresh candidates, is one such organization, making placements a lot easier, both, for the students as well as the employers. They visit campuses and prepare the video resumes of each candidate. The video presentation is an important tool to evaluate the abilities of the candidates. Employers can take quick decisions on the selection and invite the candidates for final meetings, if required.

Campus placements are boon to candidates. More than ever, manpower is in huge demand, and talented candidates are at the center of recruitment sphere. If industry estimates are to be trusted, this trend will continue in the coming months, offering great hope for fresh graduates in the country.

“Companies are back in campus with a cautiously optimistic approach and the same pattern of growth is expected to continue for another next 6 months,” says Rawat of ASSOCHAM.

How Much Do References Matter In An Interview?

Job interviews are not focused on performance alone. They are also meant to gain additional information about the candidate’s personal and professional life. There are different ways the interviewers extract this information from the candidate. References are one of the most important tools that provide recruiters with the best review of the candidate.

References play an important role in a candidate’s resume. They provide valid information about the candidate’s work related qualities such as honesty, integrity, maturity, inventiveness, interpersonal skills and leadership qualities. A positive recommendation by your references, together with your performance in the interview, would help you earn the dream job without hurdles.

A reference is a powerful marketing tool that demonstrates the candidate’s professionalism and commitment to success. It adds a professional, organized and serious persona to your candidature. A resume with references gives you a chance to present yourself in the best possible manner. A well-spoken reference from a third person substantiates the claims you made in your resume.

Considering the importance of references in a resume, you should try to get the best references from the most relevant and powerful people in your educational institutes or the organizations you worked in the past.

Tip: To get good reference, you should maintain healthy relations with your colleagues, boss and everyone around you.  

Fresh Graduates and the 2010 Job Market in India

The year 2010 started on a strong positive note, indicating fresh investments, more growth and accelerated recruitment process among Indian companies. Indian job market showed strong signals of recovery, especially after the government announced the stimulus grant to industries in India. Following the government’s stimulus measures, as many as 500,000 jobs were generated in India in the beginning of the year, finds International Labor Organization (ILO). Surprisingly, a good share of these job opportunities target young and fresh graduates in India.

A quarterly survey conducted by international recruitment firm Antal on hiring and firing trends around the world has found that India has emerged as the largest recruiter in the world since September 2009. The Global Snapshot from Antal says 71 percent of Indian firms participated in the survey said they were currently hiring compared to around half in September.

Where are the Opportunities?

While Information Technology and related services (ITES) continue to offer new opportunities for fresh graduates, sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, financial services, and communications also emerge as prospective markets for job seekers.

Easing credit conditions in the global market have indicated that investments are on their way to major companies in these sectors. Many companies view this as the best time to reinvest in projects that were either cancelled or put on hold due to recession. New investments would mean more growth, followed by new job opportunities – in entry-level, middle-level and leadership roles.

Entry-level jobs in front-line, sales and customer-facing roles outnumber other roles, according to market research agencies. There’s a huge demand for customer service agents in healthcare, hospitality, and telecommunications, not leaving behind the ever-growing demand in the BPO sector – both domestic and international.

N.S. Rajan of Ernst & Young (E&Y) India says, “While hiring will continue mostly to meet the replacement demand created as a result of the erstwhile hiring freeze, there are likely to be mixed trends in the level of hiring activity across sectors.”

Earlier this year, Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Assocham) announced that Indian economy would create 87.37 million new jobs by 2015- an estimated 15 million annual increase. This number, though looks overstated, includes jobs in the unorganized sectors as well. A more accurate estimate provided by leading industry researchers say India is likely to create approximately one million jobs in the year 2010-11.

Research from leading industry analysts finds that BFSI sector will bring approx 46,000 new jobs in India. Education, Training and Consultancy -all together are likely to create 83,000 new jobs while Energy Generation and Supply will create 15,000 new jobs. Healthcare will generate approximately 295,000 jobs while Hospitality & Travel will create 137,000 jobs. IT/ITES sector will produce about 97,000 jobs and Real Estate & Construction will bring about 136,000 new opportunities. Related researchers have also proven that Indian job market has been probably the fastest among the world market in terms of recovery. This scenario has boost the confidence level of employers.

Get ready! More jobs are on the way!

Start Networking Before You Graduate

In today’s highly competitive scenario, academics alone do not ensure good career opportunities for a candidate. To find the best opportunity, one must adopt a professional approach that works well in today’s job market. Professional networking is the best and the most effective means available today to achieve this.  

Professional networking is all about building and maintaining prospective relations in one’s field of interest. According to HR experts, networking should start right when a person enters the graduate level. It’s when the candidate decides the line of his/her future career.

Here are a few steps that can be adopted by students to build their social and career networks.

·  Build As Many Friends As You Can in Your Class
You and your classmates have several things in common, the most important of them being that all of you share a common career goal. While involving in your regular projects or other class activities, try to build good rapport with your classmates. This acquaintance will be mutually beneficial when you start looking for jobs. Friends are the best source for information on job listing. Good friends also support you in preparing for the interviews and tests.

·  Get Blessings and Connections from Professors
Getting a blessing from a Guru (teacher) is especially important in today’s competitive world. Try to be more close to your professors so that they would develop interest in helping you find a suitable career. Professors are the best source of information on a variety of career choices available today. They are also the best career guides for you because they have analyzed, evaluated and understood your strengths and weaknesses.

·  Join Internship Programs
Internship programs are the best way to get a first-hand experience on the job you dream of. These programs boost your confidence level and prepare you to face any challenges you may confront when you start your job hunt. Through internships, you also build good connections. Most universities offer internship programs, and many interns are appointed in leading firms immediately after they complete their internships. 

·  Be a Member of Professional Organizations
Today’s jobs demand a lot more than academics. The society recognizes the one who stands out in the crowd. For this, you need to be a little extrovert, communicative, optimistic and confident. By joining a number of professional organizations or an extra-curricular club in the campus, you can let others know what capabilities you have beyond academics. By joining professional organizations especially, you get an opportunity to connect with the industry leaders and expose your talents to them.

·  Attend Job Fairs and Networking Events
Job Fairs are essentially the easiest way to reach out to recruiters. Don’t miss any opportunity that comes to your campus or anywhere else in the form of a job fair or a professional networking event.

·  Join Professional Networking Sites
There are a number of job portals that also offer professional networking services. They help you to get connected with prospective employers and submit your candidature to them directly without any third-party intervention. This interaction is highly effective as it gives recruiters an opportunity to learn more about the candidate before the final selection is made. Koozba.com, India’s 1^stvideo resume job portal for fresh graduates, offers an excellent career network to young graduates and undergraduates to connect with prospective recruiters and get the best share of the jobs available in the market. 

Video Resumes: Does it make a difference?

Understanding a candidate is crucial in a recruitment process. People come from different geographical, cultural, psychological and educational backgrounds. Even the most sophisticated aptitude tests and psychological analysis may not bring out the person in his/her entirety. However, a video that demonstrates the communications ability, behavioral patterns and etiquettes can, to a great extent, help recruiters solve their dilemma regarding the soft skills of the applicants.

Video resumes are the cost-effective and convenient way of analyzing the candidates’ skills and persona. An employer can access the video resume anytime on his/her computer and analyze the candidate thoroughly. If required, they can show the video to career counselors and psychologists to get a second opinion about the candidate.

A personal interview, though a two-way interaction, is bound by limitations of time, space and individuality. In a personal interview, the members of the board decide the fate of the candidate on the spot, immediately after he/she leaves the room. If any difference in opinion arises among the members, there is hardly a way to re-evaluate the candidate or verify his/her caliber. In this regard, video resumes prove to be the most effective as

it gives the interviewers a chance to discuss the candidates in detail and playback their resumes again to clear the doubts.

A video resume is a powerful tool that can reveal a broad range of personal skills including leadership qualities, presentation skills, communications skills and mannerism. In certain cases, it can also be used to assess candidates’ creative abilities like acting, singing or dancing.

Video portfolios are also gaining popularity among professionals from different backgrounds. Candidates from management, legal, healthcare, travel & tourism, or education fields can make the best use of the video to present their skills directly on to the recruiter without any barrier. The short, crisp video of 2-3 minutes is sufficient to

contain the entire caliber of the candidate.

Video resume is also being used in the most conventional IT jobs available today. For IT professionals, video resume is the best tool to showcase not only their soft skills but also their technical skills like graphic design, animation or a specific programming skill. The impressive video clip is self explanatory, and it gives IT recruiters a clear picture of “what really the candidate is.”

No doubt, video resumes are transforming the recruitment scenario all over the world. To make the best use of this technology, one should first analyze the requirement of the industry and present the video in a tailor-made format. Professional video resume services can be of great help in this regard. Depending on the field of interest, the

candidate can create the videos to include the relevant attributes of their personality, professional experience, extra curricular activities, etc. An important highlight of the video resume is the visual impact it creates on the viewer. Flooded with the responses from prospective candidates, recruiters go through the paper resumes one by one, not showing interest in any particular one because they all look almost the same for them. If a video resume props up in front of them, it’s sure to hook their attention because it gives them what they want – a complete overview of the candidate.

It’s not just the novelty of video resume that creates the buzz about them in the job market, but it’s their usefulness as a cost-effective and powerful assessment tool that makes them popular today. When technology is helping us move forward, why should we still stick to old methodologies?