Do not study engineering just to acquire a degree certificate but focus on acquiring skills. This was the common advice given by the experts to the aspiring engineers at the 10 edition of The Hindu Education Plus Career Counselling session held here on Thursday.
Bleak job scenario
At the inaugural the EAMCET Regional Coordinator and VR Siddhartha College of Engineering Principal G. Sambasiva Rao cautioned the students about bleak job scenario due to the global recession and other factors. The Mechanical engineering professor said the wannabe engineers should not relax after getting a seat in a college. “Do not think of jobs or career from now. First focus on your course and gather the required skill set. The job market may not be favourable right now, but four years down the line it may improve,” he observed.
Acquiescing with the EAMCET coordinator, MVR College of Engineering and Technology principal K.V. Sambasiva Rao said, though the job market may not look very encouraging, real talent or professionals with good skills were never retrenched and they were always in demand. Talking about the software industry, he said that it was growing and the demand for engineers will be there. “The industry has touched 100 billion US dollars mark now from 52 billion in 2009 and it is expected to hit 300 billion dollars by 2020.
Indian Government’s village interconnectivity programme was projected to cost Rs.20,000 crore. Engineers will find placement in villages, but one has to gear up with the required skills. As per NASSCOM only 20 per cent of the engineering graduates are ready for jobs now, he said.
He urged the students to focus on basics and develop application skills along with communication skills. He also informed the hopefuls that there was no difference between IT and CSE courses, apart from a few electives. “In CSE the focus is more on hardware and in IT the thrust is on applications,” he added.
Professor M.Y. Bhanumurthy from Vasireddy Venkatadri Institute of Technology doled out tips on how to choose the right college. He suggested the participants to focus on three areas before choosing a college: Faculty, infrastructure and placement record. Talking about prospects on ECE and EEE, he said that both the branches were related with CSE or IT. The subjects are multi-disciplinary and students can carve out a career both in the core sectors as well as software industry.
In a brief address, School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada professor Daketi Srinivas cleared the air on architecture, how it is different from civil engineering and how one can make a career out of it. He said that at present there were about 50,000 architects in the country and demand was over 5 lakh.
On prospects in biotechnology, Professor K. Srinivasulu from Koneru Lakshmaiah University, said that students can opt for courses such as biotechnology, bio-medical engineering and pharmacy, as the demand both within the country and abroad was huge, especially in the research area. He advised the students to transform from the status of ‘forced learners to self-learners’.
Management quota seats
On how to handle management quota seats in the web counselling, Prof. Sambasiva Rao said that the Government was yet to decide whether to include this quota in the web and a GO was expected to be released before June 17, the proposed opening date for web counselling. While the gift sponsor was Kamal Watch Company, Red FM was the radio partner and TV 5 was the television partner.
