TWO EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS TO BOOST THEIR PROFILES FOR TOP MNCS
Rathishchandra.R.Gatti
Career Strategy #1- Nonconventional approach ( inexpensive , best validation of skills, but requires hardwork)
Use budget courses such as Udemy (as low as Rs.360/-) or YouTube (FREE with Ads) to learn the industry required skills, then do as many skill outputs as possible.
What are these skill validation outputs(SVOs)? They are clearly validation of your claimed skillsets. They are projects, research papers, products, prototypes, patents) that demonstrate to the potential hirers that you already have worked on these skills. A peer reviewed research paper or your code at GitHub is a complete validation that you know the stuff you have put as skills in your resume.
Amongst the SVOs, for hardcore technical jobs or even management jobs, peer reviewed research papers, online codes(at GitHub or other authentic platforms) and patents have the highest accord in terms of skill validation. This is due to presence of lot of recycled final year projects, no clear plagiarism check policies by the universities that employers no longer trust the final year projects as original contribution of the students.
To learn and implement in a project — go for Udemy courses and / or other high quality-low budget courses with atleast a 3.5 stars to 4 star rating . You may also try YouTube or similar video platforms for FREE courses. These may not necessarily give you an industry endorsed certificate, but they will surely increase your industry skills needed in the job market. There is some insane thinking that low cost implies low quality. While this may be true when it comes to making products out of physical raw materials, but not applicable to educational products such as courses that are made of intellectual raw materials. Tangible and intangible products have different market dynamics just the way conductors and semiconductors behave differently for same range of temperature variations (just for analogy!).
Ok. What is this non conventional gateway? HR of MNCs or at least the AI they employ in their search tools constantly eye for talented freshers at Linkedin ,GitHub or similar talent demonstrating platforms. The hiring is now highly nonconventional just the way you see CIAs recruiting their agents in movies.
Career strategy #2- Conventional approach ( expensive)
Do ONLY those courses that are INDUSTRY ENDORSED by large MNCs. The “ONLY” is bold for a reason that there are plenty of course providers where industry endorsement is just name sake and the industry guys may not even have looked in the course content. Most of the MNC endorsed courses are high quality as they are thoroughly judged by the MNCs prior to the partnership or approvals.
For eg: Doing a Rexroth hydraulics or PLC Course so that you may have high chances of getting hired at Bosch or even their competitors. Do a SIEMENS SAP course to be hired at SAP jobs in MNCs. You can also see a list of courses offered by IITs and IIScs that are endorsed by MNCs. Another popular destination of Industry endorsed online courses are Coursera and edX.
For your information, career strategy#1 is currently the most happening trend. Employers have started to loose trust even with the certifications and instead choose to see SVOs of the skillset claimed in the resume.
I would hence highly recommend that students must:
· Work more on projects and research papers by using the skills learnt from low budget or FREE courses.
· They must also demonstrate their skill outputs (products, prototypes,projects,papers) in online platforms such as Linkedin, GitHUb, Wikifactory, GrabCAD etc.
.Have a target of at least 1 research paper, 1 conference , 3–5 designs or codes floating in the online platforms in the span of four years of engineering student life .
(Dr.Rathishchandra R Gatti is a Professor and Founder of Achievers Scientific. Other than energy harvesting and renewables, he is interested in painting and writes precise career related articles. )