Covid19: Will there be jobs for graduating students

In the last few days, several local media outlets have asked me about placements. And my reply has been that with economy all over the world going down, it is bound to have an impact on job scenario for the graduating students. For the batch graduating in 2020, it would be a few withdrawals and several delayed joining, which is excellent news considering the pandemic situation.

In my opinion, the real problem will be faced by 2021 graduates. The companies in India have traditionally not fired people or gone back on their job promises (though it will happen in some cases given the economic scenario). Also, the government has been requesting companies not to fire their employees, and also honor their job commitments. So most of the companies already have excess manpower, and they have commitments to hire more. Even if they can somehow manage this, making more commitments for 2021 later half does not seem to be a good idea, unless the companies believe that economy will be back on track by July, 2021 or soon thereafter. In some sectors, this may indeed happen, but is unlikely across all sectors.

So, it is likely that fewer companies will do campus recruitment, they will make fewer offers, and perhaps those offers will be for a slightly lesser salary than in the past. Let me hasten to add that I am saying all this in the context of engineering education only.

How should students plan for this tough scenario. Only two mantras: Stay positive and Work hard.

How do you stay positive in the middle of a pandemic. You have a choice: You can feel unlucky that just when you were entering final year, pandemic happened. Or you can feel lucky that you are part of a higher education system that is of such poor quality that you can be among the top with very little additional effort, and there are going to be jobs for the top students.

Covid is not going to change teachers, curriculum, infrastructure, and given that instruction is moving online instead of face-to-face, the quality will only go down in most places. However, staying at home also means that you have huge opportunity to learn on your own through some excellent online resources. The same teacher teaching online is likely to be worse than that teacher teaching in class, not only because there is a lot peer learning in class and in hostels, but also that teacher has a lot of experience of teaching in the class and no experience of teaching online. However, we have a lot of faculty around the world who have learnt the art to be excellent in online education, and these resources are likely to be better than not only the online education provided by faculty of Tier 2 and Tier 3 institutions, but even the in-class teaching by them.

Invest effort in learning from such resources.

Today, the perception of students in our engineering colleges is that academic learning is useless. That none of the courses are of immediate interest to industry. The curriculum is outdated, and so on. They have been told by their seniors that in the placement interviews the technical questions that are asked can be answered mostly by studying 5-6 courses. The other 40-odd courses that they do are there only because the faculty is sadist, the regulators have insisted that engineering be a 4-year degree with a certain minimum credits. And in those 5-6 courses, the best way to prepare for an interview is not really to learn the concepts well, but read up of answers of a question bank.

From my experience of advising 1000s of students in various institutions, I can say that students don't believe that academic learning is useful in career. Instead they believe that while CGPA is important from the point of view of crossing the shortlisting threshold, the extra-curricular and personality and soft skills is what clinches them a job, besides the ability to answer technical questions in those 5-6 courses. A common question that I have asked these students is the number of hours they study on their own, and typical answer is that unless there are exams coming up or there is a project deadline (in which case they may work overnight), they will spend no more than 7-8 hours a week on academics. That is about 1 hour a day. So no revising the content. No self-study. Of course, extra study is totally out of question. That one hour is usually to complete the assignments, or copying notes, if one missed the class. How could you complete all your assignments in such a short period. Well, many instructors don't give any assignments (not even readings), if they do, they don't require to be submitted (so, no need to solve those problems), and if they are required to be submitted, it is best to copy them. So, one hour a day is enough.

What is interesting is that the placement data often shows that there is a correlation between CGPA and the jobs. The most sough after jobs typically come to those with good academic standing. But every year in every college there will be a few students who, despite an average CGPA would have been selected for one of those sought after jobs. Everyone will know of those examples. They often are the role models for next batches (so they can justify not working hard). And no one would believe that there is correlation between CGPA and jobs.

But here is the thing. In most courses, the important learning is not the specific context of that course. The important learning is often more generic like problem solving, critical thinking, etc. And these generic skills are what will enable you to do well not just in the interviews but also in your career. If you are unable to give an absolutely correct answer to a question, it is not an issue in most cases. If you can show that you know how to think about it, how to attack the problem, that is good enough. And that ability you would have if you had tried to solve problems in a variety of scenarios. That is the value of learning all those courses.

Also, adults learn by connecting dots, by putting your learning in the context of other things you know. So if you know more things, you learn new things better. This is another reason to take your academics seriously.

No, I am not suggesting that extra-curricular or having fun is not important. But there is time for both in your life. For example, a good engineering college will tell you that they expect you to spend about 50 hours a week on academics (including lectures, labs, etc.), and that too for only 8 months in a year. That leaves a HUGE amount of time for all your hobbies, passions, both during the semester and during vacation (even with internships).

Not focusing on academics may have been alright till now. But in this year, the competition for jobs is going to be much higher. You have a choice. You can continue to do what you have done in the first 3 years of your engineering education. Or you can work harder in these times and improve your chances of finding a job.

Just ask yourself a question. How have you used these forced stay at home. Did you make use of a large number of free courses available online. Did you complete a few Swayam or Coursera courses. How much time did you spend in doing programming exercises on various sites, if you are from CS/IT or are looking for an IT sector job. How many webinars you attended in these two months to learn some new knowledge. If you didn't do these things, don't blame Covid.

Of course, learning things better would open other options for you. In difficult times, spending extra year(s) in universities could be a great strategy. You get another degree, hopefully from a better known institution, and the economy would certainly be better in a couple of years, and you start a great career at a higher level. So you need to take exams like GATE where it is so easy to improve your scores with just a little bit of additional effort.

I am sure there are others who will advise you to continue ignoring your academics. I hear so many people saying what sectors will have jobs, and what one should focus on to get those jobs. In short, these pundits are telling the students that may be the set of 5-6 courses that they should be preparing for placement interview has changed. May be they should include a course on Machine learning in that set. But the insistence is still on learning just the bare minimum. My take is that if you invest some more hours, you would be able to learn so much more that you will be ready for most jobs.

Covid is not for ever. This too shall pass. Economy will be booming again in a couple of years. But you must prepare yourself for a difficult two years, and be ready when an opportunity knocks at your door.