K. Senthilkumar is an ATM supervisor for a nationalized bank; among his coworkers he is an important man because they value his work of loading and offloading cash at five ATM centers — all this for a monthly salary of Rs. 6,000. However, only few of his colleagues know that he is a qualified computer science engineer with an aggregate of 62 percent. “I graduated in ECE in 2008. I had just about 45 percent in class 12 which barred me from the interview process of the three companies that came to my college,” he says. Despite trying for three years  Senthilkumar has not been able to find an engineering job. “Underemployment is any day better than unemployment,” he adds.

Every year 8 lakh graduates pass out of engineering colleges in the country; less than a third of them get placed in the software industry, and a mere 20,000 or so get any of the various core engineering jobs. Only about 21 percent of the engineering graduates in Tamil Nadu get placed every year. Of the 92 colleges in and around Chennai, only about 27 had five or six big IT companies visiting their campuses. Over 60 percent of the colleges did not have even a single company in their placement drive, and about 10 percent of the students in every discipline are without job every year.

If most graduating engineers do not find suitable jobs then where do they find employment? Most of them end up in jobs at call centers, sales and marketing firms, and smaller IT companies. Although hardware networking, information security, graphics, web designing and animation are good options, they demand an extra expenditure of at least Rs. 50,000 and one year’s training that many do not want to attempt.

Also, the number of desktop engineers or networking engineers in the software industry is very less, just about 10 to every 1,000 software developers. “And most of them end up with a salary of Rs. 6,000–7,000 only,” says B. Anbuthambi, General Manager ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu. For manufacturing firms and companies that require fieldwork, hiring a polytechnic student seems more financially viable than recruiting a civil or a mechanical engineer who will demand more pay and will expect a white collar job, he adds.
In reality, engineers seeking an IT job seem to have a lot of options. With a little effort graduates can explore many options in parallel fields depending on their individual skill sets. They could apply to any of the 100 SMEs in the city, consider working as a lecturer in a college, prepare for an MBA, or join a SAP course or an IBM mainframe module that guarantee jobs.

Off-campus placements are worth waiting for too, say many students although prospects may vary. “Infosys and TCS conducted their off campuses recently, but that is only for the immediate pass outs. While IT companies may not be that particular about college performance, there is no way they will lower the bar on school records,” says S. Dharini, a 2010 engineering graduate who is looking for an IT job while working as a tech support personnel.

However, “getting an experience in a smaller IT company is useful and the jump to a bigger one is also fairly easy. Companies value experience more than school and college records,” says S. Dhanasekharan, an IT consultant for TCS.
Developing one’s skills is also a way to get into industry. Engineering students who do not get placed in campus recruitment drives must enhance their technical and communication skills for better job prospects.

Moreover, the job scenario isn’t bleak. “Not everybody who gets an offer letter takes up the job and many smaller companies have immediate requirements. Students must keep themselves updated with the latest technology, at least one scripting language and database, so that they are roped in by companies that do not want to invest on training,” says K. Karthikeyan of Tenth Planet Open Source Foundation that trains unemployed youth. Many companies, including Polaris, Hexaware, and Aricent, recruit students already trained in specific technologies from training institutes.

A fundamental issue is also the way society looks at unemployment itself, says Prof. C. Thangaraj, vice-chancellor, Anna University of Technology, Chennai. “It is a biased job market that we have. The supply is exhaustive and the industry gets to choose the best, and also demand that students know everything that is part of and outside their curriculum. There are many social and geographical reasons that go behind an engineering student’s unemployment that one has to be sensitive to.”