Aninda Das from NASSCOM “joining a engineering college gurantees a JOB? Who needs to be blamed for this?”

Aninda keeps asking amazing (and useful question). Aninda Das “Why does one join an Engineering College? Only for JOB? Who is telling him/her(student) that joining a engineering college gurantees a JOB? Who needs to be blamed for this? – parents or education institutes for wrong promotion?”

I am as free as watching Mamta ji’s recent CNN video. Here is my take on the subject from my personal experience.

I had no idea, what I needed to do, where I will get job – during grads College

I was as ignorant as any other student when I was in Xaveirs. … Thats how we are … our education has no interface with reality. Whom to blame?
My take: College should have more interface with reality, industrial fairs, making it compulsory (we were training that way), http://aji.techshu.com/indians-fear-failure/ . In our colleges we only have one type of judging … Grades (as per theory) … Its damn boring and it ignores many other dimensions … many who are not good in sitting and studying loses their confidence. That’s ok, no country is perfect, world isn’t either.

Ok, now professional course – MCA … MBA

MBA students had knowledge what companies will ask and what is needed (better than MCA & probably engineering). In MCA, we will have 2 type of students, one who were planning for Infosys and one who hardly bothered about job but will keep reading magazines, web, papers and will end up scoring very low (I think 5 point something out of 9). Some people like me, would shuffle between here and there. Both are successful in their own terms. Some got jobs from college and some got from off campus. Some worked in small companies then joined bigger ones. Some worked in startups and now own companies. Different people, different path to JOB and success.

While passing out of professional college? Most of us had no idea about what we gonna do, whats good for us. We just did the way others did. The fact is we did.

Whom to blame? Certainly not college, our college did put a lot of interface with real problems … I also made many cool application for our professors .. students? I never understood that I guess the way I should have … I was very interested in  computers, so I could spend a lot of time in computer labs. Job? May be not, as the selection is very different.

My job interview at Alumnus, must read

I was asked about MMS, I never heard that word by then. Then they asked many more things, I had no idea. They failed us. I requested for one more chance. I prepared better, then they asked about Linux and Windows security stuffs, I had no idea again … again I was failed, I asked for one more chance … I think the fifth time, I called them at night, asked “who will take the interview and whats his strength, what questions I can expect” … I learned those and cleared the interview for “A CHANCE”. On job, I got trained for php, mysql etc … all Google learned, people hardly taught anything … We did good, so next opportunity came … Grmtech …. joined there for a mobile ….. http://aji.techshu.com/three-years/ ..Job trained me, shaped me, gave me a direction on what to do in life …..

My final take – Don’t define job, do job properly and it will help you find the path

Understand, you are different from me, your opportunities are different from mine, so is mine with someone else. We all are different. Take it step by step. Don’t fall victim, just fight it out. Get a desktop, get an internet connection, study it again, enter somewhere where you can be mentored and given chance. Offer your laptop or desktop, work from home, keep working, keep learning. You can’t change your past, you can’t change your country or culture that easily (I fought with many companies in Salt Lake when I was student, asking to give MCAs a chance to sit with Engineers, they said no, I argued but they did not listen to me).

  1. Hey’s it ok if you are not good but you need to understand you are not good and improve from there.
  2. Grab opportunities, work hard, work smart, learn as much as possible. My professors told me “What you learn here in 3 years, your company will teach you in 3 months”.
  3. Show positive attitude, work day and night when you can, party day and night (the things you enjoy) whenever you can. During my first job at Grmtech, I will work for 3 to 4 days, 16 hours or so and from Friday to Sunday I will go back to hostel to enjoy with friends.
  4. Gain confidence in yourself.
  5. Meet mentors (in office and outside), Meet good guys/girls (and get positive energy from there), go for events, network …
  6. Don’t try to learn, just be listeners, just be there, and learn in bits and pieces … it will make sense at a later stage, just be there, collect nodes/dots to be connected later  http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
  7. Enjoy, take pride in whatever you do.
  8. Nobody needs that much money, it will come, just take care of your basic needs and don’t put yourself in demands which can lead you to depressions and wrong directions.
  9. It’s ok to be human, we all do wrong, we all fail, we all get rejection but we all can fight back ….
  10. Never compare, its never between you and them http://aji.techshu.com/never-between-you-them/

Hope it helps atleast one person in next 10 years, then my 30 mins goes worth.