Opportunities beckon engineering students

Updated on: Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Eighty per cent of Indians don’t have bank accounts, 50 per cent of Indians don’t have access to primary health care, 50 per cent of food

distributed by the government for public doesn’t reach the targeted groups and the country faces a shortage of nearly three lakh teachers.

These are facts, yet have lot more significance than mere statistics mentioned at the routine government meetings suggest.

Academics and industry heads see tremendous employment opportunities in these facts and want the engineering students to turn these

challenges into opportunities instead of cribbing over recession that has hit the IT sector.

Professionals from the industry and academics shared these views at an Industry Academia meet on “Employment Opportunities, impact of

recession on students, and how to overcome it,” organised jointly by JNTU Hyderabad, Nasscom and Globarena in Hyderabad.

The experts were unanimous in their opinion that recession is a temporary phenomenon and it has to be fought with improved skills,

performance and productivity.

Even in this recession period, more than 60 per cent of companies are growing in India and less than 13 per cent are considering

retrenchment. If IT industry is hit, banking industry is on a high with commercial banks earning Rs. 36,500 crores combined net profit, which is

more than 25 per cent than previous year. “Job seekers have to look at such fields.” However, there was a word of caution for engineering

graduates.

Even if recession is over, not everyone would be absorbed and there will be a majority who have to search for newer avenues. And there are

many other avenues available that unfortunately engineering graduates are unaware of.

An expert team constituted by the Planning Commission of India has identified 30 such fields other than IT where employment opportunities are

abundant and students need to explore these areas for better future.

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