In an attempt to reach out to the students and help improve their placement prospects, the Placement Unit (PU) recently established the Awareness Committee. The English Press Club, in conversation with the coordinator of the committee, Shubham Aggarwal, found out more about the rationale behind its formation, and its functions.

For students, the most common source of information regarding placements is their seniors and peer group; this was corroborated by a survey conducted by Emrtanz Survey, a consulting firm hired for the purpose. These informal sources of advice lack authenticity and may spread misinformation, which can be harmful to candidates sitting for placements. Another pressing issue faced by the PU is the blacklisting of BITS by companies in response to students initially accepting job offers and rejecting them at a later date. A lack of the crucial knowledge required for finance and consulting jobs is also a persistent problem that leads to students not being adequately prepared. The belief that learning competitive coding in the third year is the only requirement for an IT job also hurts career prospects, as companies also require students to be well-versed in their core subjects.

The Awareness Committee has two primary objectives: to make students aware of the realities of placements, and to increase the approachability of the PU, especially for first and second-year students. Finance and consulting have been given independent units due to the increased focus required to improve the relative weakness of BITSians in these sectors.

The Awareness Committee is a nine-member team, with students from every batch selected on the basis of their performance in the interviews of other committees on campus, such as the Corroboration and Review Committee (CRC), and recommendations by their seniors. The Awareness committee comes under the purview of the training head. It was conceptualized by Tabir Mishra, the Placement Manager.

Many changes have been planned in order to achieve the committee’s goals. The Placement Chronicles, currently a bulky annual document, is planned to be revamped in the form of shorter newsletters in order to disseminate information effectively. Webinars held with important personalities in the industry such as Varun Shetty and Ankur Jain, have not garnered much attention, and are to be revamped. Talks with alumni, which were so far organized by the Students’ Activities Cell (SAC) through the PU, are planned to be handled directly by the PU itself. An open Q&A page is also in the pipeline, to allow students to ask their placement-related doubts anonymously through social media.

With the aim of helping students navigate the maze of the placement process, the Awareness Committee is an excellent step in making the placement season less challenging for the students.