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The Inaccessible HR Manager

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DQI Bureau
New Update

At a

recent discussion of Training & Placement Officers (or TPOs as they are more

commonly known) of government as well as private IT engineering colleges, I

discovered that a big gap still exists between them and the recruiters from the

IT industry.

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A big point of

discontent seems to be the issue of imparting soft skills to aspiring students.

Increasingly, the recruiters representing software and hardware companies insist

that besides the technical knowledge that they will like to measure the students

on, they would also like to check out the students' soft skills like attitude,

problem solving capabilities, inter-personal skills, level of motivation, and so

on. The recruiters are beginning to lay more stress on these aspects. The TPOs

argue that they do not have bandwidth or time for imparting these. And these

should be taken care of by the companies at the time of their training and

orientation. While I agree that the focus of technical colleges should be

imparting high quality technical education, they must see the need of the time

and start building up some sort of a structured process to sensitize students on

this front too.

Another demand from the

recruiters is for ensuring that the student's basics of science are updated

and refreshed. While the recruiters complain that these students often falter

with fundamental questions like 'What is Charles Law?' or 'What is the

measure of force?' the TPOs say that these were taught to them when they were

in Class X, how will they remember them correctly several years later. The TPOs

say that the schools should be held responsible for this. Without getting into

an argument, my submission is that irrespective of the need coming from the

recruiters, the engineering colleges must put in place some system to ensure

that their students' basics of science are refreshed when they begin their

journey towards becoming engineers.

One feedback about the

recruiters, which seems to come from across a wide section of TPOs, is

that the HR managers are extremely inaccessible.
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Giving sermons only to

the TPOs will be unfair and will most probably not solve the problems. The HR

managers are also to be blamed. For instance, one feedback about the recruiters,

which seems to come from across a wide section of TPOs is that HR managers are

extremely inaccessible. 'How many times have I tried to call up the HR manager

to meet him, but the man is too busy' says one TPO of a fairly well known

engineering college. 'Finally, I was asked to meet a very junior HR executive,

and my objective of exchanging ideas with senior level decision makers there was

not achieved', said this TPO.  This

problem is much acute for the smaller and lesser known colleges.

The more or less

complete lack of support and co-operation from the industry to the academic

world does not end here. One big opportunity for exposing students to industry

environment including soft skills is internship and summer training. The common

complaint from every TPO was that companies are very un-yielding when it comes

to offering internships. If we are telling the TPOs to build structures and

processes to impart soft skills and science basics, it will not be unfair to ask

the companies to give some more resource for internships. Ultimately, the

industry is going to be the final beneficiary. 

The recruiters and the

HR managers completely forget to give back any kind of feedback on the students

they recruit. I feel this is a major flaw, because unless HR managers give

feedback to colleges how do they expect colleges to take corrective action at

their end?

Clearly there are steps to be taken at both the ends. The

TPOs should realize that unless they are flexible and a little industry

oriented, their students will have a tough time getting jobs. And the HR

managers and their recruitment team members must understand that unless they

give full support to the colleges, they will continue to hire students with

shortcomings.

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