Campus hiring continues to gain traction in the city with fresh recruitment drives in the virtual mode belying the bleak scenario projected during the peak COVID-19 and the lockdown that followed to curb its spread.
Professional colleges in the city which conducted online classes till recently, have switched to the offline mode but the campus placements continues to be in the virtual mode.
‘’We are expecting to hit the pre-COVID 19 level of placements within the next two months and this is on the basis of the number of companies evincing interest in recruiting freshers’’, said Pradeep Manjunath, Placement Coordinator, JSS Science and Technology University, SJ College of Engineering, Mysuru.
The circuit branches comprising computer science, electronics and communication, electricals and related fields have wide openings while the demand from the mechanical stream is also gaining slow traction, he added.
The revival of the automobile sector has created fresh demand for the mechanical engineering students and there is a huge requirement for the manufacturing sector which is gathering fresh steam, according to B. Sadashive Gowda, Principal, Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Mysuru. He said even in case of students who were recruited last year when the pandemic hit, reputed companies honoured the commitment made to the students.
However, the virtual mode of interviewing freshers tends to put off a section of the students not familiar with the intricacies and hence they are failing to make the grade, said Prof. Sadashive Gowda.
But the VVCE has a pre-placement training in which students are given a comprehensive overview of what constitutes an online interview and the mode of facing it, said .J.K. Roopa Priya, Training and Placement Officer at VVCE.
She said campus placement activities were taking place with one or the other company conducting online tests or holding virtual interviews on a daily basis though none of the buzz was visible on the campus.
The pandemic and the lockdown has resulted in development of a slew of online recruitment tools and going forward this could as well be the norm, according to Mr. Pradeep Manjunath. He said more than 125 companies have conducted online tests and virtual interviews for students of JSS Science and Technology University this year despite the lockdown and the slowdown in the economy. The VVCE too has an impressive line of companies to recruit fresh talent.
A direct fallout of the pandemic is the decline in the number of students going abroad for higher studies, said Ms. Roopa Priya.
Most students have deferred their plans of higher studies abroad till September or have turned to writing the Graduates Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) to seek admission to PG degrees, said Mr. Pradeep Manjunath.
