Jobs Not Anymore At The Mercy Of Campus For Freshers

For decades now students have been pursuing degrees and diplomas in order to chase jobs opportunities that come through college, university or personal references. Every year, millions of freshers come out of colleges ready to join the workforce, unfortunately, poor employment opportunities and salaries have led to partial job exposures. With the advent of technological disruptions in the ecosystem, newer avenues have opened up to the aspirants. 

Background

2018 was a good year for freshers as they saw a good demand flowing especially from e-commerce and start-ups due to massive funding rounds which have to build a sense of optimism around the start-up ecosystem. Companies like OYO, Amazon India, Droom, Shadowfax, ShopClues among many others were to include new institutions for hiring talent. Technological disruption has enabled freshers to connect to companies and vice versa. With digitization, looking for jobs today require a laptop and an internet connection which proves tech disruptions has benefitted both students and corporate companies. 

New Opportunities

As per reports, the online job market will double in the next 18 months which shall build a large opportunity for the fresh workforce aspirants. Job opportunities will be across various departments including operations, human resources, business development, marketing, sales, and data science. As per reports, search trends reveal that local searches across these categories have grown four times in the past four years, led by non-metros including Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Kochi, Coimbatore and Jaipur. 

With the new generation more handy with smartphones, gone are those days of job hunt. Now it’s on their fingertips with more online job portals in India. This was especially a boon for people from non-tier 1 cities who came to these cities physically for job hunt. With Online job boards like Freshersworld, Jobgrin, Shine.com, Firstnaukri, Indeed, monster, Wisdom Jobs and many more the job exposure growth has been immense. There are approx. 5 lakh open jobs across these job boards and career sites of the hiring companies. Non-Engineering and non-IT jobs are especially getting filled through such platforms and not necessarily campus. 

Way Forward

India is yet to build its appetite to absorb the number of passing graduates at this point as the difficult task here is to absorb the graduates or create jobs according to their profiles and skills. The other aspect why most graduates find it difficult to find a job is due to the skill gap, and not being corporate ready. The initiatives by the government and the exposure to online tutorials and assessments will help fill this gap. Jobs are Human capital and not just education. Online jobs potential to double and the growth especially on the IT Industry shall lay more options for job aspirants in the years to come.

Ajay Shah

Guest Author The author is head of the recruitment department at Teamlease Services.