Workshop on “Empowering Training and Placement Officers” held at Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) College of Engineering Pune

16 May 2019 , PUNE : Workshop on “Empowering Training and Placement Officers” was recently Organized at Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) College of Engineering,Pune .

Workshop was inaugurated at hands of Rohini Wagh, Associate Vice President (HR), Nitor Infotech.

Jitendra Sandu, CEO, ‘Focus Integrated Talent’, Ajiitabh Dutta, CEO, ‘Simplicity Communications ‘and Prabhuling Zunza, ‘Design thinking consultant’ were the guest of honour for the programme. Senior HR personnel from reputed industries and TPOs from more than 55 different colleges across Maharashtra participated in the workshop.

Dr. Anand Bhalerao, Dean and Principal, Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) College of Engineering, Pune presided over the function. Prof. Nachiket Kulkarni, TPO, BV(DU)COE, proposed the vote of thanks.

If TPOs enhance the T part of their role, P is bound to happen -said Ms. Rohini Wagh, Associate Vice President (HR), Nitor Infotech during the inauguration of Workshop on “Empowering Training and Placement Officers” organized by Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) College of Engineering, Pune on 8th May 2019.

She was Chief guest for the programme. She elaborated the role of TPO for academic institutions and organisation being extremely important as nowadays everything is revolving around creating placement and jobs. She further said that industry and academia have an age-old association. However, this association could be more fruitful if they come together for a certain purpose and get evolved as today the increase in number of institutions and students has been impacted quantity and quality of graduates. TPOs can focus on corporate paradigm and long-term sustainability when working towards enhancement of employability she said. Not only employability but creating skilled workforce and problem solvers and innovators who make a larger impact on industry and nation should be a guideline for TPOs when training students she said. She also said there is a need to influence the gap positively and role of TPO is to create deeper collaboration with industry to increase engagement

Mr. Jitendra Sandu, CEO, FIT started his speech with a statement that TPOs should keep in mind HR is the buyer and student is the product. The challenge to TPOs is 3000+ Engineering colleges are producing 15 lakh engineers every year, where only 1 lakh can get jobs he stated. Approximately 45 lakh students are unemployed and 51% of students are employable he said. He mentioned that instead of glorifying awards, glorify student who is actually the product to be sold to industry. He said there is a need to focus on strengths and address areas of improvements and create a Focused Integrated Talent. For this, he suggested a SWOT analysis of students can be undertaken when they enter the institute so that the training department prepares them before they step out for placement, He also mentioned the benefits of students’ employability program. He concluded with a remark that students who do internship and project on their own have a double chance of success.
Mr. Ajiitabh Dutta, CEO, Simplicity Communications, addressed the gathering about the importance and role of digital marketing for TPOs. He said that TPO are marketing assets. He said that TPOs should look into perspective of Digital marketing as a game changer. TPOs job in this context is creating content for the consumer viz industry, students, academia. He elaborated on guiding principles to create digital strategies for TPO.

These included figuring out medium for marketing, choose assets, experience design for institution and placement officers, enhancement of searchability for students, teachers and TPO, the role of social media, conversation and convenience to ease the efforts of corporate for recruitment, Customization in students profile as per industry requirement, building collaborative platforms.

Mr. Prabhuling Zunza, freelance, elaborated on how design thinking can be applied in academics for better education. He said that up skilling and upgrading are the pillars of building students and surviving in today’s business environment.

Dr. Anand Bhalerao, Dean and Principal, Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) College of Engineering, Pune concluded the programme by sharing his views on how directive efforts can be taken for “Making students Employable” by academia and industry together.
He said that if placement is the only aim of admissions students can never be satisfied regardless of the institute, they seek admission to. He further said that role of academic institute is creating knowledgeable engineers who will give solutions of all possible problem when they become professional engineers. Expectation of industry is students should be of potential who can solve problems and accept new challenges because business is not constant, and engineers should be ready for the changes he said. He also said that when seeking admissions focus should not be only on teachers and infrastructure but rather on transformation of students from raw person to contributory person for the society or industry. Academic institutes are also responsible for creating such environment where students are evaluated on the innovations developed and personality evolved instead of mere placement percentage. Also, he suggested that recruiters should give more weightage to technical round when selecting students for placement so that the industry get potential candidate. He also suggested that enhancement of duration of program to make time for long term technical internship might be a solution. However, enhancing the duration of a single institute won’t help, it should be collectively solved, he said.

Prof. Nachiket Kulkarni, TPO, BV(DU)COE, proposed the vote of thanks to Chief guest, guests of honour and Dr. Anand Bhalerao, Dean and Principal for making such need of an hour programme success.