PANJIM: The thousands of students gaining their degrees and post-graduate degrees in 2020 will face the uncertainties of the real world as they go out job hunting.
Job availability has dropped drastically due to the COVID-19 lockdown and has led to the stalling of many businesses and even lay-offs. However, with industries opening up, some interested business houses have begun to advertise for new jobs but vacancies are too few to accommodate the freshers. The new trend that has emerged is of getting experienced people at a lesser cost, which puts the fresher against stiff competition.
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MAIT all India President Nitin Kunkoleinker believes that for Batch 2020 job creation is likely to be very less in Goa. “They need to look forward to continuing their education with value addition and improving their skills. This is ‘V’ type recession as job availability that has come down very fast due to COVID-19, will also shoot up very soon. I expect a very fast recovery. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future and only competitive people will be able to survive, so in the meantime they have to build up their qualifications and skills,” Kunkoleinker said.
Kanika Vaswani, founder, Women Entrepreneur Network (WEN) and a professional headhunter for various blue chip companies agrees that there is a lack of opportunities available and it is down by at least 50 to 60 per cent. The reason is lay-offs in start-up organisations and good and experienced talent now available at a reasonable cost.
“People are now willing to take up jobs at a lesser salary from what they were getting in their earlier jobs and this is happening across India. When you get experienced people at a lesser cost then obviously your second choice becomes a fresher,” Vaswani said.
She went on to add that they hire based on past grades as most of the times the final results are pending. “We go to the campus during September to November for recruitment and we decide on the basis of their semester results, talent and previous track record before we give them the offer letters or letters of intent,” she said.
From that perspective big organisations have honoured their commitments. Hiring is happening but at a very slow pace and the quantum is low. The situation in April was different but the graph is showing an upward trend in hiring since July onwards.
Open Destination Limited VP Milind Anvekar also believes that many students passing out this year might find it difficult to get a job or a good job. “These are challenging times and we need to get out of this stronger and as better professionals and individuals. Rather than taking a break and doing nothing enroll for further studies or specialized programs, pick up paid or unpaid internships which can provide the required experience, offer help to schools, colleges, teachers in conducting online classes, seek mentoring from industry professionals and keep looking out for opportunities. For the next financial year, I see a lot of IT companies recruiting freshers and you just need to prepare yourself for these opportunities,” Anvekar, whose organisation has around 500 employees in Goa, said.
That companies are going to look for persons who can multitask, is endorsed by Prof Rahul Tripathi of the Political Science Department of Goa University. “The batch of 2020 will have to prepare themselves for an uncertain new world, where in addition to their existing competency they will have to be multi-talented. They have to be able to think holistically, out of the box solutions and must have an edge over basic IT applications. The idea of a permanent job itself may undergo a change as project specific assignments become the norm,” Tripathi said.
Ricky Noronha, founder of Online Productivity Solutions Pvt Ltd is of the opinion that one should encourage freshers. He states that they have always had a preference for smart freshers willing to learn and apply stuff, try new tools and technologies, build world class solutions for clients across the globe.
“We did Goa’s first export (Outsourced IT project) for the Brazilian government SOFTEX Foundation as far back as 1998. Those days no one had even heard about the word outsourced, forget knowing what it meant. So, yes, we love smart freshers and some of our best work has indeed been done with them. For the batch of 2020 – take heart. Nothing’s lost. We think you have all you need by way of the theory, the foundation, the concepts and the rules of the game,” Noronha said.
He added, “Not having answered exams or got proper scores or mark sheets do not worry us. As long as they are smart, have picked-up the stuff from the books and tired professors in the colleges and universities, that’s fine for us. Sure do get that degree – it’s needed for the future.”
