L.N. Revathy

Headhunters were happy with the quality of job aspirants

Coimbatore , July 23

If one went by numbers and credited the response to The Hindu Opportunities Fair as overwhelming, the headhunters said that the quality of the job aspirants (by and large) surpassed their expectations.

The number of experienced candidates outnumbered the freshers list on the second and final day of the Fair on Sunday, signalling the general discontent among job seekers in staying put with the same employer for years in a row.

Quite a number of candidates, both men and women had come from destinations like Goa, New Delhi, Meerut, Chennai, Bangalore, Nagercoil, Madurai, Ramanathapuram and the neighbouring State of Kerala to seek the change. There were some finance professionals including a management graduate of Nigerian origin. And most of them were looking for technology-related openings in their domain space rather than the call centre kind of job. The crowd though mixed, seemed to be drawn to city-based company stalls or companies that had set up its presence here.

Maiden Attempt

Fresh graduates, mostly engineers, appeared to be the most disappointed lot, for most of the participating companies merely collected their CVs and said they would revert as and when the need arose. A good number of these candidates were from low-profile colleges and it was their maiden attempt at seeking a job in an Opportunities Fair.

Reliance Communications, however, seemed to have no reservation. The company has, in the last two days, short-listed 212 candidates, most of them freshers in Electronics and Communications branch of engineering. It has selected four candidates for marketing (all experienced and out of the 17 short-listed) and given letters of intent to five out of the 45 short-listed for their contact centre. The company spokesperson said the short-listed candidates would have to take another test followed by an interview to complete the recruitment process.

Main sponsors of the event - Cognizant Technology Solutions has made offers to 205 job aspirants and given letters of intent to 60 candidates in the last two days. Its Vice-President, Global Resource Management Group, Mr Venkatesan Seshadri, said the company was looking for people with good work experience. "We have a stringent selection process. The response has been decent and as anticipated, the serious enthusiastic guys came in on the first day," Mr Seshadri said.

Mr Gideon Jagadish, Assistant Manager, Human Resources, Spheris, said the quality of the candidates appearing for the tests were comparable to Bangalore with 20 per cent clearing the tests. According to him, the city had the potential to emerge as a `transcription' hub, as the language skills were pretty high. "There are so many educational institutions, but what you lag is industry-institute handholding," he said.

On the final day of the event, Spheris shortlisted 122 candidates, while Chennai Silks - 165 and Honeywell 150 among other participating companies. While 20,000-odd job aspirants queued up at the venue on day 1, it stood at 9,000 on day 2.

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