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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

Campus Hiring: The Unwanted Tech Kids

Vidya Balakrishnan & Rishi Das
Friday, December 29, 2006
Vidya Balakrishnan & Rishi Das

The new ‘average’ kid on the block!

By Vidya Balakrishnan

Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology (JVIT) is one of the innumerable colleges in Bangalore with no placement history. More than 90 percent of its 600 graduates were left unemployed last year. Roughly around the same time, when their peers from top engineering institutes in the city were weighing different offers, a bunch of engineers from JVIT were running from pillar to post. In the absence of an active placement cell at college, and after three months of a hurtling journey down the path of dwindling hopes, they gave in to survival necessities, and joined a company they had long aspired to—IBM; but only on the help desk as tech supports.

This is the untold story about the unemployed engineers of the burgeoning Silicon Valley of India— Bangalore. To start with, its distinction of having the highest number of engineering colleges in the world (alongside science institutes, research organization and tech companies in the country) kept it apart from other metros. And garnered the coveted title of Silicon Valley. Today, it shelters more than 60 percent of the 123 engineering colleges in Karnataka, with nearly 20,000 engineers graduating every year from the city alone.

What would otherwise appear as an ideal ground for the talent seeking mammoth IT industry in Bangalore, suggests the apathy of orphaned, and often, unwanted children of the newly mushroomed engineering colleges in the city. To put spoon in mouth, an estimated 50 engineering colleges of the total 69 have less than 30 percent placement of its students. Indicating that more than 40 percent of the 20,000 graduate engineers in Bangalore are unemployed after campus recruitment every year!


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