Career Skill Development for a Fresh Engineering Graduate,Aspiring to Work for Premium IT Companies:
Over the last decade or so, the IT industry in India and worldwide has been evolving at a fairly rapid pace. Some of the new technologies emerging on the horizon and creating a lot of buzz in the marketplace include Internet of Things, Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR), Machine Learning, Automation, and Big Data. These changes in the environment have put the industry in the position to take a much choosier approach while hiring people across all the levels including fresh engineering graduates. Consequently these freshers, hired by the premium IT companies, for the role of software engineers or software developers, need to develop some key career skills as that is the only way they can stay ahead of competition during the campus hiring process. The traditional model of colleges churning volumes and industry picking up the same is long over. Companies are also realizing that investing even a couple of months to retrain the on-boarded freshers may not be a compelling business proposition. The premium IT companies have very high expectations from the candidates in the areas of Technical Skills, General Aptitude, Communication Skills, Personal Effectiveness, and Etiquette. The methods used for evaluation of technical skills include Technical Aptitude, Coding, and Technical Interview across segments such as C, C++, Data Structures, Databases, Operating Systems, and Computer Networks. The tools used for aptitude assessment are Quantitative Ability, Logical Reasoning, Verbal Ability, and Verbal Reasoning. The communication skills, personal effectiveness, and etiquette are evaluated via Group Discussion/Group Task and HR Interview. Since the elite group of companies hand-pick students based on their rigorous hiring process, they (students) need to demonstrate highest level of competence in order to get selected by them (companies). All these key areas of evaluation are vast in themselves and developing deep level of competence in all of them, in line with industry expectations, is a long-drawn process. There is no shortcut to success. The students, who are targeting to start their career with the premium companies, need to consistently maintain an excellent academic record, to fulfill the eligibility requirements of these companies, as a first step. They also need to start planning and preparing for the companies recruitment process, much ahead of time, ideally, as soon as they get admitted to an engineering college, to allow them plenty of time to get ready for the companies approaching the campus in the first month of the final academic year. As the key evaluation criterion in the hiring process of the elite companies is Application of knowledge and skills for the real-life problem solving and debugging, algorithm development, and logical thinking, the approach and methodology for the grooming is entirely different from the one used for academic assessment. Many students fail to reach their potential due to inertia, a complacent attitude, and an illusion about their readiness for the premium companies. In absence of any opportunity for due-diligence, many students do not get access to accurate information from an authentic source. This may result in absolutely no decision or an ad-hoc career decision on their part under the influence of invalid assumptions, biased inputs from an unqualified source, and peer-pressure. A great start to the career can have a hugely positive impact through the future life (personal and professional) of an individual, so its worth putting in efforts to make it happen, at the right time.