The plight of young engineering graduates in Maharashtra

I graduated as an engineer from a tier 3 college from Kolhapur in 2014. I studied Electronics and Telecommunication engineering, but I fell on the classic pathway of software engineering when a mass recruiting Indian Software MNC hired me from a pool campus. If it wasn't for the awesome training that the MNC provided, I wouldn't have been at this position in my career. I was thoroughly trained in various technologies. The motto was clear, they wanted to produce as many Jack's of all trades as possible. I did very well in my Java and J2EE module and liked it very much. However I was assigned to a Oracle support project like many people in my batch. I was asked to work with SQL, PLSQL and Unix.

Although I was initially sad due to the fact that I couldn't pursue career in the technology I wanted, I took it up as a challenge and learned about DBMS, Oracle and SQL as much as I could. I got myself enrolled in a Weekend Masters Program offered by BITS, Pilani to learn the fundamentals of computer science. It was one of the best step I have ever taken in my career. I kept on learning and joined a startup in December 2017 as a Database Developer after working for 2 years in the MNC that hired me and a year in a medium scale product based MNC.

I was the only Database guy the startup had. The work was awesome but as the number of projects grew, it was time to look for some help and hire a senior database engineer. The startup showed faith in me and asked me to hire a junior database engineer instead to assist me in my tasks. We started considering people with 0-2 years of experience. Telephonic rounds were scheduled and I was conducting interviews looking for people good with SQL and DBMS fundamentals. We considered fresh engineering graduates as well. I interviewed at least a dozen candidates off which 7-8 were fresh graduates.

When it came to fresh graduates, I asked them about the projects they did and then I asked them fundamental questions on DBMS and SQL. People with a degree in Computer Science/ Information Technology were unable to answer questions based on normalisation and simple select statements. A few who did answer above, couldn't differentiate between a DDL and DML statement. Only a couple of them went par the second level, but were unable to write a simple SQL statement which involved use of a Group By clause. I took necessary precautions to ask generic questions that were independent of RDBMS engine implementation. I kept them simple. Yet, I couldn't get a satisfactory answer.

Many question arise here,Why weren't they able to answer the questions although they had DBMS as a subject in their curriculum? They had been given enough time to prepare before the interview, they had used some RDBMS in their academic project as well. Was it the sheer ignorance of the candidates? or Was it the lack of practical/hands on training? I could not answer this question. I probed a few CS/IT people in my network to get some insights of the nature of training they got in college. I was shocked to know that most of them said that they hardly wrote beyond a single line of SQL while in college.

This problem isn't limited to DBMS or SQL. It remains same for almost any technology. The tier three colleges aren't producing any employable engineers. The curriculum is outdated, there isn't enough time alloted to practicals, people barely get hands on experience while they are studying. There is no concept of office hours for students to interact with faculty. The concept of teaching assistants is alien in this part of world.

Students aren't confident enough to do a degree project themselves and mostly buy it off the market. There are numerous people and consultancies that provide projects with documentation. This is a very big issue which isn't being addressed by education department and it won't be fixed very soon. This doesn't mean that the young graduates must loose hope. The internet technology has taken a huge plunge in recent times. During my undergraduate days, I used to have 2G internet and hence couldn't harness its full potential. But the situation now is different. You get 30 GB of high speed internet at a month at a negligible price. Young grads should harness the power of internet to get their skills set ready. There is fierce competition out in market means that you should grab on the opportunity as soon as they get one. Don't loose faith, all is not lost yet.

Below are a few tips I would suggest students and colleges to implement in order to fill in the industry-university gap -

Colleges :

1. Identify your alumni who are working in different technologies. Make a list and ask them to visit your college every quarter.
2. The alumnus who are good at expressing and sharing experience should be asked to conduct orientation sessions every now and then. Please note students need someone they can relate to and alumni does the job for you.
3. Identify who among your alumni is good at conducting a hands on session in a technology that can help students sharpen their skills. Please note that the students do not need a lecture, rather need someone to help them learn hands on. Professors usually do not have exposure to complex situations that industry demands. Someone working full time in industry is the best motivation.
4. Ask your students to enrol in NPTEL programs and help them with the infrastructure required for it.
5. Encourage practical sessions and let the labs be open beyond college time for students to explore more.

Students :

Please understand that the role of college is to bring you placement opportunity, but the selection remains in your hands. Grab every opportunity you get with both hands, be prepared for failure, but never loose hope. Below are a few things that can help you sharpen your skills -

1. Keep in touch with your seniors and take their help to identify a technology you would like to learn.
2. Enroll in MOOC's. There are many MOOC's that provide a good exposure to subjects that aren't covered in your curriculum. The limitation of these MOOC is they aren't very hands on.
3. For hands on skills look for courses on websites like Udemy, DataCamp, FreeCodeCamp, SkillShare etc. Enrol in them and create some projects around it.
4. Follow companies on LinkedIn, Facebook. They often publish white papers that will help you learn quite a few things.Read the papers, ask your seniors or professors if you don't understand any concept in the papers.
5. Most importantly build things! Do a number of projects and get them reviewed from your friends, seniors or anyone you know who works in industry.
6. Create a GitHub profile (Very Important), push the code that you have created in it. Mention the GitHub profile on your resume.
7. Create a website to showcase your work and achievements. You can get free hosting on cloud services like AWS, Azure for free for a year ( Limited usage of course)
8. Try to create a single page resume if you are applying off campus. The resume should not have too few details nor too much of details. There are tons of templates on internet. Be creative and expressive.
9. Improve your communication skills and be confident when you face an interviewer.
10. Understand that self learning is very important. Develop a habit of it. It helped me a lot and I gained quite a lot in this way.

I hope that this little articles give you a good direction and hope to get started. Start working! Do smart work! Rock the world!