Career

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship. In our previous article, we saw how talent coming out of IT engineering colleges do not have the skill sets the IT industry needs. In this article, we look at what the solutions could be. Though the hiring scene for fresh IT graduates looks bleak, there is still some hope. There are options if one has the willingness to put in extra effort and learn while working. “Experienced talent is tough to come by and it is getting more and more expensive. Hence more companies, both large ones and startups,…

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship. Shreyas sat on the ‘bench’ for a few months after being selected by a top information technology company in Bengaluru through a campus recruitment drive. Coming from a tier-1 college in the city, and even after undergoing an induction programme, he wasn’t given any project to work on. He felt the need to study more and acquire new skills, to keep up with the trends in hiring. He quit the job and moved to Germany to study more. Many of his classmates who couldn’t study further are still on the…

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship “I wanted a job that would pay me well. But more importantly there needed to be some ‘prestige’ attached to it.” says 20 year-old Sathish. His father Pothalu has worked as a pourakarmika for the last 27 years. Sathish grew up watching his father sweeping the streets of Basavangudi. There are countless like Sathish, who come from underprivileged backgrounds, looking for jobs. These youngsters' ambitions face a lot of hurdles - limited opportunities, access to quality education and financial challenges in their homes.  Most of their parents work in the…

What are Employment Exchanges? An Employment Exchange is a government establishment which offers employment support to the unemployed youth on the basis of their educational qualification and work experience. The Department of Employment and Training, Karnataka looks after Employment Exchanges in the State including the offices in Bengaluru. Exchanges act as a bridge between the job seekers and the employers. They inform about the vacancies in public and private sector to the job seekers and pass on the information/data of the job seekers to the employers - both government and private - which the employers may use whenever there is…

Having lost their significance over the years, Employment Exchanges are in dire need of a revamp that will make them suit the changing employment trends and unemployment patterns. During the course of working on this series, what I gathered from talking to officials is, in Karnataka seemingly there is no full-fledged plan yet to revamp the Employment Exchanges. However, some attempts have been and are being made by governments of the times to make Employment Exchanges relevant. In 2008, Employment Exchange offices were given a major task of organising job fairs. Since then, the Directorate of Employment and Training considers…

In ‘Pratidwandi’, a Bengali movie directed by Satyajit Ray in 1972, there comes a scene almost at the end of the film, where the protagonist Siddhartha Choudhari waits outside the interview room hoping to get a job. The corridor is crowded. There are 75 applicants for four available positions and the applicants end up waiting for more than three hours, most of them standing on the corridors in the absence of chairs. The scene reflected the unemployment problem that plagued India in 70s and how well qualified people had to slog to get a job. Like ‘Pratidwandi,’ several other movies…

Just two months away to welcome a New Year, Kannada Wikipedians celebrated the completion of 10 years of journey towards building a free encyclopedia for Kannada. Wikipedians from different part of the state gathered today at H Narasimhaiah Hall, National College, Basavanagudi to witness the event. The stage was adorned by the father of the modern Kannada dictionary, Nadoja Prof G Venkatasubbaiah, the chief guest, along with T R Anantharamu, Senior Scientist (retd), Geological Survey of India, Abhaya Simha, National Award fame Cinema Director and U B Pavanaja from A2K (Access To Knowledge.) Prof Venkatasubbaiah handing out mementos to Wikipedia…

Nazia Hanifa, 31, a resident of Jayanagar, is frustrated about her career. The reason: she wanted to be a scientist, but did not get a suitable job after completing her Masters in Microbiology. After working for six years in a multinational company without any promotions, she quit her job earlier this year to be a homemaker. She is now considering taking up a course on business analysis, so that she can restart her career. Nazia says that if she had got the right advice in her college to take up right courses and subjects, things would have been different. “If…

Sometime around February 9, my maid came up to me with a Kannada newspaper and tentatively enquired whether I was free. She wanted to know whether I could help her fill in an application online for her sister Azira who was seeking a job in a Government Primary School as assistant teacher. Thinking that this should merely be a matter of downloading a form and handing over the printout for her to fill, I readily agreed. She showed me the URL in the newspaper: http://www.schooleducation.kar.nic.in. I typed it out in my browser and the page that opened up looked nice,…

Karnataka has witnessed a steep hike in the number of senior citizens looking for jobs over the years. Nightingale Empowerment Foundation, an organisation that helps senior citizens of Bangalore to get jobs, has recently seen a very high rate of enrollment. Unfortunately since October 2011, out of 1100 registrations, the organization has been able to get employment for only 260 of them.Swathi Bhandary, Project Manager at Nightingale said: "Employers should realise that most of the eligible citizens are very much capable of getting recruited."Accountancy, call-centre and other clerical jobs are areas wherein senior citizens are recruited.The Directorate of Welfare of…