AUGMENTED PLACEMENT OFFICE - A NEED OF ENGINEERING COLLEGES

AUGMENTED PLACEMENT OFFICE - A NEED OF ENGINEERING COLLEGES * S. A. Meshram, Devesh Dubey and Anwar Shaikh College of Engineering, Pune - 411005, India *Author for Correspondence ABSTRACT The prosperity of any Nation is intrinsically linked to its human resources. Human capital is one of the most important assets of a country and a key determination of a nation s economic performance. An increase in human development index would lead to high levels of economic growth of country. The strength of a nation is dependent on its intellectual and skillful citizens. A quality human capital comes from a quality education process. The present day to day changing economic scenario of the country as well as the world has made astonishing effects on the future of the engineering degree holders. Current placement scenario after engineering in India has drawn a different landscape which was beyond the logical conclusions of the analysts. This gives a need for employability skills. A report by Aspiring Minds National Employability Report 2014 compared employability within students graduating out of different metro cities in the country. The results are reported as Software Engineer IT Product Software Engineer IT Services Associate ITeS Operations Design Engineer Non IT Sales Engineer Non IT Business Analyst KPO Associate ITeS/BPO Creative Content Developer Technical Content Developer. The report highlights the trends of employability in engineering graduates and the need for proper coordination in Placement activities by a centralized way. The role of a Training and Placement Cell comes to fulfill the gap of giving the correct human capital to the best fitting profile/job. Placement is a decisive factor which contains determination of the job to which an acceptable applicant is to be assigned and his/her assignment to the job. i.e. proper matching of the applicant with the job. Objective of placement cell in engineering colleges is to fit the outgoing students to the requisite requirement of industries. Placement cells are the most important part of the institutions that shape one s personality. The higher is the percentage of the placements, the better the college hold, true in the present competitive scenario. In the present scenario, most of the engineering colleges are facing challenge to arrange placement drives in their colleges and number of placements of their students. While very few colleges are able to attract more companies for the campus drive at their colleges and such colleges have advantages over other colleges. This kind of disparity is due to many reasons. Hence there was a need to reiterate the importance of Placement Cell in Engineering Colleges. Key Words: Employability, Training & Placement Cells, Placement Officers and Campus Drives INTRODUCTION Training and Placement Cell is an integral part of institution. The institute has to provide the complete infrastructure for effective functioning of the cell. The cell is sensitized to function all through the year towards generating placement and training opportunities for the students. There are many training centers in India who have expertise man power and provide different soft skill and hard skill trainings to the students during vacation and also during regular college hours. Some of the professional training centers like Career Prime, Merit Trac, JV Global, Black & White, Globarena Technologies Pvt. Limited (GTPL) etc... Train the students to acquire the skills needed by the industry. Sripala and Praveen (2011) mention the importance of the technical institutions to enhance the capabilities of engineering graduates by developing talent, creating knowledge through institutional solutions such as creating digital resources and creative technology solutions for class room learning. Why Training & Placement Cell is Important In today s world Industries have come along with several social responsibilities for which they wish to give their best in academics as well as the future of nation. This enrolls a bond between industry and institute. The Training and Placement Cell is the major relationship center for these industries giving them the guidance for the right way they could initiate their noble cause. This builds the trust and healthy relations among the industry & institute for a win-win situation to bridge the gap between the two for the sake of the students getting absorbed by the industry and the full-fillment of the industrial need getting right talent at right place. The Training & Placement Cell plays an important role in any of the institute. It is the mirror or face of the institute. A student seeking admission in a college tries to find the placement position of the students in past. This is the same with the industries willing to recruit the fresher s. Many surveys are conducted by government and private organizations, where the placement department and its facts and figures play a vital role in deciding the ranking of 61

the institute (Champal, 2012). These surveys are being followed by many industries in preferring to the institutes for the recruitment activities. This also acts as a center for career guidance of the students. In this highly competitive job market, the placement indicator is a likely feature which makes strong impact when students think of admission in an institute. Placement cell is the single window of contact from the industry view point. The ambit of activities which the industry wants to take up in an institute is directly dependent on the active role of a placement officer and his team. More energetic and vibrant is the placement officer, more energetic and vibrant is the placement cell. Need for establishing Training & Placement Cell (1) To enhance the employability of engineering students and to cater to the needs of the industry. (2)To create a platform where the students can work towards accessing the skills required to get into industry. (3) To bridge the gap between industry and educational institutions. (4) To provide both technical and soft skill to people to facilitate their employability. (5) To reinforce the students skills and acquire industry specific knowledge from trained faculty and experts from industries. Objective The main objective of the study was to analyze the need and importance of training and placement cells in technical institutions. The study conducted was descriptive in nature. The study was made to understand the present working status and functioning of the Training and Placement Cells in various colleges across Western Maharashtra in particular. Functions of Training & Placement Cell Generally the Training and Placement Cell will have to perform following functions. (GSCET-2014) To assist in the development and maintenance of a database of appropriate employer and commercial/industrial links. Prepare the student s data base with all relevant information such as Personal details, Academic details, Achievements, Skill set etc. Inform the students to prepare their Resume and maintains a separate file for resumes of the students in both soft as well as hard copy. A list of companies / organizations with brief profile, address, contact details of concerned HR person etc. to be maintained. To invite prospective companies to campus for recruitment. Conduct regular soft skill and hard skill programmes to the students. Conduct personality development programmes and career guidance programmes to the students. Arranging industrial visits to the students & faculties. Providing information regarding higher education and career counseling. Taking regular feedback from the industries about the performance of the students and department. Maintaining the record of the feedbacks from industry and initiating regular institute & student enhancement. CASE STUDY OF COEP The College of Engineering, Pune, fondly called COEP by its alumni, students and faculty, is the third oldest technical institute in Asia. It was started in 1854, and produced alumni like Bharat Ratna Sir M. Visvesvaraya, in whose honour Engineers Day is celebrated in India; Prof. Thomas Kailath and Dr. C. K. N. Patel, two eminent engineers from India decorated with the coveted IEEE Medal of Honour and scores of others. However, in a highly competitive world, if the momentum to excel is not maintained, and autonomy is not available to pursue the institution s own goals, an institute even one of excellence can decline. This is what happened at COEP through the decades of the eighties and nineties, and by the year 2000, the institute had only its history to cherish!! As is well known, one of the key requirements for a high performing institute is to have the freedom and autonomy to pursue the institution s mission, purpose and goals. Autonomy (with proper accountability) should be total in terms of all key facets of its work viz., academic, administrative, managerial, and financial. Quite often, a private self-financed institute has all these autonomies except academic. But, it is the Government colleges that do not have any of these autonomies. Many may wonder what essential aspects of autonomy were missing at COEP and what could not be done prior to the granting of autonomy (Sahasrabudhe, 2014). The Training and Placement cell of COEP was established 35 years ago in the decade of 80 & 90 s on the onset of global companies making Pune a favorite destination for automobile giants. The Placement cell was the only avenue 62

then making the task of establishing ties with the industries and tried to bridge the gap by providing talented human capital to the industries. Being a Government college, the sources of funding was limited; hence the placement office was operated from the existing buildings of one of the departments. It did not have independent resources and all the infrastructure was on sharing basis. Slowly with the rising demand of the Engineering Graduates and the dawn of IT sector, a full-fledged Training & Placement Cell was need of the hour. With the private colleges mushrooming in and around Pune with excellent infrastructural facilities, a fully fledged independent Placement Office was the needed. After getting autonomy in 2004, COEP developed its Training and Placement cell with high preference. The cell was empowered by the proper office setup with amenities, dedicated work force guided by an officer ranked equivalent to the level of HOD of any department. A separate identity was provided to the cell. This gave a tremendous boost to the work force and the students to indulge in attracting the industries and building relations. The placement cell acted as the front face for the institute, creating many relations between the industry and institute. This filled a major gap which is normally seen in today s world. With these initiatives COEP was able to sign more the 100 MOU s with several industries and this also made a new passage for joining the hands with different Institutions and universities across the world for betterment of academics. The major growth that took place was the placement of the COEP students grown in good temper resulting in more than 120+ companies visiting to COEP for hiring the engineers for their organizations. The percentage of placements at COEP in last 5 years is clearly indicated in figure 1. This also gave a vision to industries to participate in the academics with the institute creating the human capital as per the requirement of the current trend and future prospects. Many labs and state of arts facilities was also donated by many industries to give a better and actual feel of the real world of industry. The College of Engineering Pune offers undergraduate programs in 9 disciplines and postgraduate programs in 23 specializations. The college has also been a recognized research centre for the Ph.D. programme of University of Pune. The institute was selected as a lead institute under the TEQIP (Technical Education Quality Improvement Program) World Bank Project of Government of India through a national competitive selection procedure in 2004. The institute also got reselected as a lead institute under the TEQIP Phase-II with grant of 12.50 Cr. (Sahasrabudhe 2014) Industry Linkages of COEP These were developed to such a level that industry was involved not merely in the faculty/staff recruitment process, but in many other areas like, curriculum development, providing examiners, internships, live projects, consultancy assignments, contributing to courses, training staff, sabbaticals, setting up of laboratories, giving awards for the best faculty/ students. Another unique feature has been industry donations to set up state-of-the-art laboratories. As a result, every department now has 2-3 laboratories entirely supported by industry. A few notable examples include Plumbing Association s Plumbing lab; Premier s Vinod Doshi Workshop, Robotics lab; MIT s Fab lab; BSNL s Telephone exchange; Nvidia s GPU Lab; IFM lab; Rockwell s Automation lab; Emerson s Automation and control lab; Quanser s Control lab; IBM s Cloud computing lab; Cognizant s Innovation lab; Forbes Marshall s Steam technology lab; Eaton s Corrosion lab; Kirloskar s Engine lab and Bajaj s Mechanical lab. The development of a Steam Technology lab and that of an Engine lab had other special features i.e., that these were not mere donations, but provided on-going engagement between faculty, donor industries and students; and the laboratories were developed as a series of UG projects over a 3-4 year period. There are probably few institutes in the country, which have so many industry supported laboratories. It is interesting to note that there are many other industries wishing to donate laboratories, waiting in the wings, until additional building space at COEP becomes available. There is another type of major linkage with industry; such as that provided by the Honeywell Company, which organizes an event every alternate year at COEP, when a Nobel Laureate is invited to spend three days with the students interacting on cutting-edge research. These initiatives have enabled COEP to reach new heights in academic and placement of the students in recent years. (Sahasrabudhe 2014) The purpose of the Training and Placement Cell was to enhance and sharpen the required skills among the engineering graduates and make them employable in the IT &Core industries visiting COEP for campus Placements. This was a supplementary training that attempts to make-up for deficiencies of low tier students by providing specialized training in technical fields such as Computer, Electronics and Telecommunications, IT, Mechanical, Metallurgy, Civil, Electrical, Production, Instrumentation and also in soft skills which aims to provide relevant skills both in technical and soft skills to students, to facilitate their employability and play a part in the supply side issues of the industry. This training was designed with sufficient flexibility to benefit the fresh engineering students coming from far-flung villages and urban places with different backgrounds. 63

COEP launched a novel program EAGLE (Energized Accelerated Growth for Leadership Excellence) for developing not just communication skills but life skills among all third year engineering students of COEP. This programme was jointly developed and offered by Hermitage led by Ms Kamalrukh Baria and COEP faculty members (Parishwad et al., 2014) The entire programme comprises of three stages; Nurturing stage, Learning to Fly stage and Soaring stage. The programme is touching the lives of 700 plus students in a positive way for life. This is the first of its kind program in the country launched in association and fully supported by Industry. The main contributors are TCE Ltd., Thermax Ltd., Kirloskar Brothers Limited, KND Engineers, and TATA Trust. The programme is closely and meticulously monitored through software LEAP which was developed in house by COEP faculty. The LEAP gives lot of analytics on progress of individual students and the group, both monthly progress and overall cumulative progress. The sponsors and the faculty are able to see the progress of the Eaglets from anywhere through net connectivity. Looking to the overall placement statistics for 3 consecutive years; one can clearly understand the scenario of placements at COEP. As shown in figure 2; the Placement of the engineering students has shown a regular growth and also the salary packages offered by the companies to students have increased. This is due to the active collaboration of the industries with COEP in several contexts, resulting in preparing the students as per the industrial needs which indicates the readiness of students for transformation in the campus itself. The Stream wise placement performance is also indicated in figure 2 which gives a clear picture of type of demand in today s industry. Engineering Graduates Placement Figures SN Year Enrolled Placed % Second Job 1 2010-11 654 602 92.05 109 2 2011-12 686 612 89.21 182 3 2012-13 674 584 86.64 98 4 2013-14 678 541 79.79 180 5* 2014-15 677 555 81.97 270 *Placement activities still in Progress. Figure 1: Showing total placements in percentage at COEP 64

Figure 2: Showing various aspects of growth in Placements at COEP Best Practices adopted by COEP in their T & P CELLs COEP have adopted the following best practices to run their Training & Placement Cell effectively. Setting up the Vision & Mission of Training and Placement Cell Nomination of faculty and student coordinators to work in Training and Placement Cell with coordination. Organizing an Annual Meet of all HR s of software and core industries for their valuable inputs. Organizing Annual TPO Officer s Meet for interaction with all placement heads. Arranging of Industry institution interaction programs with CII etc and among several departmental alliances. Arranging Motivational talks from resource persons from different fields. Arranging workshops for enhancement of Interview & Communication skills. Maintaining yearly statistics for the students placed companies wise; date wise; stream wise etc. Arranging and allotting for internship & live projects to the students. Using Templates for all Training and Placement Cell office works to enhance productivity. CONCLUSION This study can help the college management / higher authorities to plan the necessity of the Training & Placement Cell in their institute. After establishing a full fledged Training and Placement Cell at COEP the focus was drawn towards the collaboration of Academia and Industry resulting in a increased placement figures. This also fulfilled the demand of the industry with right talent hired at right place. The institute through the best practices adopted in collaboration with the active participation of industries could get the much converted award of AICTE-CII Award. Also the case history of Placements @ COEP is on AICTE Website. 65

The institute became the role model in Maharashtra where several industries have agreed to join hands with COEP by the way of donations or establishing state of art infrastructure. India's substantial growth in recent years has resulted in a significant increase in demand for engineers. Employability was determined according to students' success in campus recruitment drives, that is, whether they received an offer of employment. This is a concern in many engineering institutes those giving higher education are not properly equipped. These all factors and the changed scenario which indicates that a dedicated Training and Placement Cell is required with availability of the amenities and an energetic and vibrant team for enriching and enhancing the employability in engineering institutes. REFERENCES Aswathappa K (2011). Human Resource Management. TataMcGraw Hill, 6 th edition. Champal de C (2012). KYE - know your entrepreneur: an alternative approach in volatile times, 24th Anniversary Convention, 249-264. Hariharan R (2009). Technical Vocational Education and Skills Development. The Indian Journal of Technical Education, 32 30-37. Mantri A, Dutt S & Gupta JP (2007). Imbiding soft skills in technical studies: The problem based learning way. The Indian Journal of Technical Education, 30(4) 79-83. Mohammad AA (2012). Outcomes-based Education and Employability at Philadelphia University. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 10 40-48. Varun Agrawal (2014), National Employability Report Engineers, Annual Report 2014 by Aspiring Minds New Delhi. Parishwad GV, Sutaone MS & Meshram SA (2014). Implementing TEQIP at College of Engineering, Pune: Policies and Practices, Nanded. Shukla D (2012). Employability Skill among Professionals Chagrin of HR Executives in Indian Labor Market: A Study on Engineering Graduates of Bhopal City. VSRD International Journal of Business & Management Research, 2 418-427. Sripala B & Praveen GV (2011). Soft Skills in Engineering Education: Industry Perspective. Language in India Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow, 11 1-7. Sahasrabudhe AD (2014). A report on COEP story of Transformation through Autonomy (Unpublished). Saravanan V (2009). Sustainable Employability Skills for Engineering Professionals. The Indian Review of World Literature in English, 5 3-5. 66