For many, their journey of SRCC culminates in the placement season, with them giving their best shot to bagging a handsome package from some celebrated corporate house. The placement record of SRCC in this regard is often displayed as the most enviable jewel in its crown, and the placement cell as its biggest bulwark.
The fact, however, is that while some students land their dream job, many others are left high and dry. This is not because the others were not competent enough; it is simply because they were not able to navigate through the system quite as successfully.
This system is actually set into motion from the very first semester itself. As we have already discussed in the previous posts, there are discriminatory practices in place in many spaces in the college.
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Image source- msrcasc.edu.in
If the students for whom, societies and classrooms had become inaccessible, feature at all in the placement race, then they are starting from several paces behind the luckier ones. For instance, getting into societies, or holding society positions, not just decorates your CV; it also brings you into contact with the seniors who can guide you through the process. The background asymmetries of the students get translated into power and information asymmetries.
Moreover, the requirements of job recruiters do not end at a pretty resume and a pretty mark sheet. They extend, very subtly into demanding a ‘pretty presentation’ of your own self. This is not just the professional dress code that is mandated, but the overall exhibition of an exaggerated version of your personality. It all depends on how well you market yourself .While this can be true of any sort of interview setting whatsoever, the point to be noted with respect to corporate interviews is that they only demand the exhibition of an elite self. No amount of independent or critical thinking, can compensate for this ‘missing glam quotient’ of a low income, low caste person. Independent and critical thinking is very often not even assessed in the interview. The ‘smartness’ that impresses the recruiters is thus of a very specific kind, present in only specific type of people. Again, the background of the person comes into play.
Beyond these issues in the backdrop, the formal placement process as conducted by the PC itself is also quite arbitrary. The groundless discretion with which the vetting process was carried out the previous year, for instance, was unnecessarily taxing for all students. The most controversial condition was that of getting proof for every numerical, every tiny detail mentioned in the students’ resumes- the lack of which would leave one with a completely washed down version of their CV. Generally, such an intricately detailed record of an intern’s work is not provided by the internship recruiter. Here also, those who had got their internships through contacts fared better than the rest, because they could get their internship recruiters to testify all their claims. Those who earned their internship without using any family/friends’ contacts could barely elicit few surface level acknowledgements from their recruiters. Most often, those with a privileged background had the contacts, thus deepening the divide in the opportunities.
On top of this, the exorbitant PC fines are agonizing for the not so financially well-off. A payment of as high as Rs. 1500 for skipping a pre placement talk, or wearing formal shoes which the PC does not find ‘formal enough’ is unjustified. What is the purpose of all this apart from weeding out the low income class people is not clear.
Even the portfolio of the companies coming to the college as recruiters is very restricted, with management consulting and finance taking the lion’s share. Diversification into obvious fields like advertising or media is also not undertaken by the PC. This greatly limits the opportunities of students who are not interested in, or have not been able to mould their skill sets according to the requirements of consultancy or finance firms. This is another reason why only a fixed set of students are able to bring home the offer letter. This was, in fact, clearly visible in the placement results of Tier 1 companies last year- a little more than half the seats were filled by only a few students getting multiple offers. The PC should, in scenarios like these, ideally mandate companies to have waiting lists so that more students get the chance, and even the companies do not have to leave empty handed.
The companies called are also very confined in terms of location, with many of them being based in Gurgaon. Since our college is host to pan-Indian students, many of which might wish to settle closer to their home-towns after college, this creates an unwanted curb on their choices. Given such a tough placement process, with so many odds especially pitted against socially disadvantaged students, we have to understand how not getting placed can be a substantial blow to the psyche of the candidate. Many of these non-elites have huge expectations of their families burdening their shoulders. They need the security of a job more than the others. Such an adverse experience negatively affects their confidence regarding other paths forward, such as applying for masters abroad. They start questioning whether they can make a place for themselves anywhere at all.
However, many parts of the process, even if especially unfair to the socially underprivileged ones, are extremely problematic for others as well. Woes of updates not being received, despite registering with the PC website, and a non guarantee of confidentiality affect all. The category of students whose well-being the overall process of placement actually caters to is so narrow, that a huge chunk, which is not at all only made up of socially disadvantaged students, is left disappointed. In such a case, using college placements as a metric of one’s capabilities should not be encouraged as a method of conducting self-assessment. It has the potential to shred every last thread of self -confidence that the student might have weaved together in all his/her years.
There is therefore a dire need to change the mentality which puts an over-emphasis on college placements as the be all and end all of the life of any job seeker.
Keeping this in mind, efforts should be made to level the field as much as possible. For instance, the PC needs a well-functioning training wing so that all have equal opportunity to prepare case studies and guesstimates under good guidance, not just the ones who have contacts with seniors. Not just mock-interviews, this wing should be responsible for helping in LORs, CV writing and so on also. The training wing should be active since the very first semester of the students, letting them know the relevance and importance of things like online courses, introducing professional courses and providing more links to internships directly.
Another very important change that needs to come in the way that PC conducts its affairs is the discouragement given to off campus placements. Given the restrictions in the type of companies that PC calls, there should be some sort of awareness spread about companies that it chooses to not call also. In fact, the much hyped brand name of the college is better leveraged during off-campus than on-campus placements.
So it is imperative that while PC should take these concrete steps, there should be an effort by the entire college, including the faculty and students, to stop taking the inability of some students to get placed via the college as proof of their incapacity.
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