VIJAYAWADA: Unemployed engineering graduates in the State seem to be unenthusiastic about the offer of government to find them placements. Job melas and skill development camps being organised by the government in engineering colleges as part of its efforts to find employment for graduates have hardly any takers. Less than 10 per cent of graduates are turning up for these programmes, according to officials. Keeping this disturbing trend in mind, the AP Non-Resident Telugu (APNRT) Society, which brings potential employers, is re-launching a new website ‘itcentral.in’ to bring both job seekers and companies on a single platform.
In July this year, VLSI, a reputed company, came forward to hold on-campus recruitment drive in the State for the engineering graduates of 2017 and 2018 batches. Happy Minds, a recruitment and training firm, which partnered with APNRT Society, was behind in inviting the company to recruit 60 fresh graduates at an annual salary of about `4.5 lakh. All the colleges were notified about the programme and told to enlist their students. Disappointingly, only 54 fresh graduates turned up for the recruitment while there were over 28,000 unemployed youths from various colleges in the State. Seeing this lukewarm response from graduates, the firm left in a huff.
Speaking to TNIE, Happy Minds CEO TV Leeladhar, said, “There are companies that are keen to recruit candidates from Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam and set up their units here. But we were disappointed to see the poor turnout for the recruitment drive. So now we are focusing on reaching out to the candidates in a better way and create awareness among them.”
S Sree Krishna, Director of APNRT Society, said, “We sent the notification about job vacancies to all the 28,000 candidates. Of them 1,500 called us to enquire about the drive and 650 sent in their resumes, but only 54 turned up. Soon after that we visited colleges and sought feedback from the students on recruitment drives and based on this we are planning a better approach to campus placements.”
The website ‘itcentral.in’ will help companies and candidates find a common meeting ground. Questionnaires from top companies will be placed on the website and candidates who top score will be shot-listed for campus selections. The website will soon have a database of 10,000 students from the State and their scores so that interested recruitment agencies can access it, said an official.