Private colleges look for better visibility to lure public sector units

Updated on: Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Private unaided engineering colleges remain the least favoured option for campus recruitments by the public sector undertakings (PSUs) which have vast employment opportunities and effect significant recruitment every year.

Training and placement officers (TPOs) from prominent engineering colleges in the city observed that PSUs usually focus on recruiting from the Indian and the National Institutes of Technology (IITs/ NITs) and a few prestigious institutions like the College of Engineering Pune.

According to R S Badami, TPO with the Sinhgad Academy of Engineering, the PSUs have been recruiting heavily in the last few years with firms like National Thermal Power Corporation taking on board as many as 500 engineers, last year.
“However, we (the colleges) are not getting enough campus visits from the PSUs and this calls for a collective effort to see that a better recruitment platform is offered to them,” said Badami.

College of Engineering Pune TPO Sandeep Meshram said, “Companies like Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum approached the college for recruitment last year, but more PSUs must visit the campuses. In all 120 companies visited COEP during 2010-11 recruitment season, leading to a record 95% placement of students.” “The average salary offered was Rs 4.5 per annum (pa) with the highest offer going up to Rs 16.8 lakh pa. Core companies came out as strongly as the IT firms and matched salary offers. However, the PSUs had a subdued presence,” he added.

A part of the problem is being attributed to policy decisions like implementing recruitment programmes through advertisements in employment newspapers. “There are companies like Steel Authority of India Limited and Coal India Limited, which insist on going by policy decisions with a strict eligibility threshold of 60% score for students to qualify for recruitment,” he said.

The Federation of TPOs has resolved to get the University of Pune to set up a common placement cell so that private engineering colleges can use brand UOP to attract PSUs and industry majors. A similar effort, when the UOP was headed by Narendra Jadhav, failed to come through. There were technical difficulties such as limited infrastructure to handle mass campus placement exercises and accommodation issues for students reaching the campus from other UOP affiliated colleges in Ahmednagar and Nashik districts, a university official pointed out.

Private colleges look for better visibility to lure public sector units

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