NEW DELHI: As many as 71% of the student-base in India is looking for job opportunities, while 19% opt to peruse higher studies and 10% plan to become entrepreneurs, revealed a recent online survey launched during the Webinar by Jeevitam – a tech-enabled livelihood platform.
The students who participated in the poll during the Webinar were under-graduates and postgraduates and the majority hailed from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.
The startling facts came to the fore during a webinar “Participative College Placement Drive” organized by Jeevitam in association with Asian Community News (ACN) Network on October 2. The event that offers students and job-seekers opportunities of employment, witnessed participation from across India.
The initiative is also supported by the National Institute of Career Services (NICS), an offshoot of the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
“The students and job seekers attending the webinar joined our online survey (poll) launched during the webinar on Oct 2. To our surprise we found out that the majority of the attendees (71%) are in need of regular or part-time jobs, and they are looking for opportunities with very few to drive and guide them through,” said Munish Chawla, Co-founder, and Chief Happiness Officer, Jeevitam
Munish said the survey also revealed that about 10% of the youths prefer to go own their own and become entrepreneurs as they were to create employment for others. It’s a good development. However, 19% of the youths opted to peruse higher studies, he added.
The webinar which is organized every Friday at 5.00 pm was attended by students and work-seekers from across India with 43% of them joining from tier-3 cities while 24% and 33% were from tier-2 and tier-1cities respectively, the online survey revealed. So, a total of 67% of attendees were from tier-2 and tier-3 cities together, forming the majority.
Interestingly, 91% of the attendees expressed their desire to be part of the “Participative College Placement Drive”, and 95% wanted to join the webinar again.
The Oct 2 webinar was attended by top-notch experts drawn from various fields of corporate, academia, and media to share employment and entrepreneurial opportunities with the youths.
The panelists included Anuka Kumar, Leader – Academic Partnerships and Career Education, IS/A, IBM India; Soraya Rebello Vice President, CSR & Corporate Communication, Jakson Group & Management Author; Mohinder Batra, FMCG Veteran, Certified Master Coach; and Sanjeev K Ahuja, Editor-in-Chief, Asian Community News (ACN) Network.
Munish Chawla, Co-Founder & Chief Happiness Officer Jeevitam, and K G Mohan, Independent Management Consultant, moderated the session.
Anuka Kumar introduced IBM Career Education Program during the event. Through this program, she said, the IBM India was trying to help the workforce which is under transformation, business and industry are transformed by the new technological advancements, and jobs which are created are lined basis the new skill demands especially in the IT digital space.
“Rate of change of technology is far ahead of the rate of change of business, and businesses are lagging behind and not able to keep pace with the technological changes because skilled and enabled skilled force is not available. My advice to the students is they to plan their career around digital transformations, and learn new skill sets to be employed,” said Kumar while introducing IBM Skill Academy.
Soraya Rebello, Vice President, CSR & Corporate Communication, Jakson Group, who has also authored an educative book called “Skills for Life” & a Self Help Book named “Paving The Highway To Success from Home” quoted Charles Darwin and said the species that survived were not the ones which were healthy but the ones who adapted to the changing environment.
While addressing the students, she delivered tips on how to find work basis their skill sets and talents, or an extra set of skills.
“Students should share valuable inputs on social media, build a strong LinkedIn profile that should entail details about the projects and assignments in addition to their educational and professional qualification, and this will attract more recruiters. Not only the recruiters are looking for full-time employees but also as consultants, associates like GIG, and part-time workers,” said Rebello.
The next speaker was Mohinder Batra, an MBA, and FMCG Veteran as well as a Certified Master Coach with over 40 years of corporate experience in the Sales & Marketing and Business Development domain across the FMCG businesses with more than 35 years stint with the Godrej Group.
“Pandemic a great teacher to all of us, and it gave us the food for thought and new opportunities as well besides putting spanners in businesses and jobs of many. The concept of the distributed workforce such as commission agents, or sales and marketing can be done sitting at home. Many have thrived during the COVID period only. One fine example is the cloud kitchen concept which originated during this pandemic only,” said Batra.
Batra asked the students to call up Jeevitam and get registered to look for ample job opportunities. Jeevitam has recently entered into an understanding with ICICI for providing them the workforce, and many more corporates are joining hands with this livelihood platform.
