Placement season – the phase where majority engineering colleges in India enter into claims of salary packages and 100% placement records. And while the perceived prestigious of the lot i.e. the IITs, NITs and IIITs, are all competing to attract the cream of recruiters to their campuses, there is one institute still yearning to fetch companies to visit them. IIIT Vadodara, situated in the outskirts of Gandhinagar, hasn’t received a single recruiter in the 3 years of its existence. In our previous articles we wrote about how the institute is functioning under the captaincy of a mentor institute (DAIICT), and without an in-house Dean or Director.(Read here) While the quasi management (the Registrar and DAIICT) has affirmed efforts on its part, IIITV students are already at their wits end. Some of them grumbled about their loss, while most students had given up their fight.
The students who still had the fight to complain, described their desolation when most of their schoolmates in other engineering colleges had earned myriad job experiences by the third year. While students in other institutes brace themselves for the wave of internships and placements, the scene at IIITV is still dry and mundane. “The institute suggested that we look out for internships ourselves than waiting for the management to arrange any,” said of the third year students. Now in many other engineering colleges also, students have the freedom to pursue internships not arranged by the college, but they do get some assistance from their placement office if required. However, IIITV seems to have a dormant placement cell which only awakens on the commands of DAIICT.
This time next year, IIITV will be entering its first placement phase. The Registrar, C Joglekar, says “Positive efforts have been made in collaboration with the DAIICT placement office to attract recruiters to our campus.” Supporting that statement, Prof R. Nagaraj, Director, DAIICT, has also affirmed assistance in IIITV placements. He says, “This year DAIICT will conduct preparatory sessions to prepare IIITV students for placements. We have also spoken to recruiters to visit their campus next year.”
Students are now banking on the word of Prof Nagaraj for final placements. Although they have no experience of facing interviews and no on-field training to boast of. Could the students have negated the lack of teaching facilities in the institute, if they were given adequate on the job training opportunities?(Read here) Most likely they are only hoping for the institute to give them one major reason to reminisce their college.
In conversation with some of the third year students (the first batch of IIITV), I realised how keenly they had been waiting for recruiters to visit the campus. As PaGaLGuY too runs its own internship programmes throughout the year, I happened to mention that in passing to the student group. The reaction I received was desperate and impromptu. Students threw a barrage of questions about the programme, the experience, stipend, and all. I had already imagined how their hopes would die down once they realised that we offer a writing internship.