The Hindu Business Line : Not such a hit, after all...

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There has not been any attributable difference in terms of hit ratio
Not much change in terms of employability index of engineers
Impact of Net penetration on student exposure levels

Bangalore May 26 Are corporates connecting right with campuses? Have attempts at industry-academia tie-ups borne fruit in the form of increased employability index of engineers in the country? "Not really," says Mr Madan Padaki, Co-founder and Director, MeritTrac Services, a skills assessment firm.

"There has not been any attributable difference in terms of hit ratio in recruitment of engineers." When it comes to hiring fresh engineers, the conversion rate remains at 15-18 per cent for services companies and 6-10 per cent for product development companies, with some region-wise differences. In his opinion, the benefits of campus relationship programmes would be felt two years from now.

Mr Rishi Das, CEO, Campus Connect, agrees that not much has changed in terms of employability index of engineers. "The good thing is that companies are investing a lot more on training their engineers." Campus Connect is a Bangalore-based consulting group whose programmes attempt to bridge the gap between industry and academia.

Finishing schools

Another ray of hope could be in the form of finishing schools, a concept initiated by the Government to tackle the suitability problem. Increased Internet penetration has had some effects on student exposure levels, but statistics show that only 25 per cent of the 4.5-lakh engineers that graduate every year are employable, according to Mr Das.

Like always, companies that are seeing a growth of 60-70 per cent on the people side are betting big on campus recruits this year too. MindTree Consulting, which used to pick talent only from Tier I institutes all these years, has now decided to hire top performers from Tier II institutes to supplement the demand, according to Mr Mohan Sitharam, Associate Director, People Function, MindTree Consulting.

Talent pool

Mr Srinivas Velidanda, Director, Recruitment, Perot Systems, however, has seen some change in the talent pool this year. Some of the students have come better equipped with soft skills such as communication and management skills. "Though our recruitment criteria has become stringent, our hiring ratio also remains at last year's figure (100:20), which means students are also becoming more employable this year," he points out.

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