Amidst rising demand for knowledge workers in the IT sector a NASSCOM–McKinsey report foresees a lack of 500,000 of them in the IT/BPO industry by 2007-08.

Campus Connect, a division of CareerNet Consulting, recently held their annual event “Continuum 2006” as a convergence of collaboration between the academia and the IT industry.

Campus Connect aims to provide a meeting-ground and a platform for the much-needed interaction between the academia and the IT industry. The result of which is the coming together of top-notch IT companies and premier IT-schools of the country. Over 40 institutes, including all the IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani, Delhi College of Engineering, Vishwakarama Institute of Technology (Pune), Kakatiya Institute of Technology (Warangal) and around 50 companies that included among others, IBM, LG soft, Cisco, Adobe, Motorola and Open Silicon participated in the sessions that focused on the emerging career trends, campus recruitments, the semiconductor industry and the academia.

Overall, six sessions that delved into various subjects that needed granularity in the IT industry were hosted. A panel of distinguished speakers addressed the gathering that included professors and industry professionals who explained the evolving role of campus placements and the importance of having a placement department at campuses.

In relation to the recent comments made by chief mentor of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, that 75 percent of Indian engineering graduates were incompetent and unfit for employment in IT firms , the meet focused on generating solutions to decrease the gap between the academia offering and industry needs.