Odisha job fair: Thousand of aspirants, but few jobs on offer

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Feb 3:

The much-talked-about Nijukti Mela (job fair) announced by the Odisha government to provide employment to nearly 40,000 unemployed technical students of Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), now seems a distant possibility.

While the Technical Education department is ready to conduct the much awaited Mela after completing all formalities, a majority of companies, who had earlier given their consent to participate in the Mela, have now backtracked on their promise to provide employment. Others, who have agreed to participate in the event, have made it clear that they would recruit candidates as per their requirement.

The department had invited 300 companies to the Mela of which only 40 have agreed to participate.

In this context, a high level review meeting, presided over by Industry minister Debi Prasad Mishra, was held at the State Secretariat here on Monday.

While the meeting decided to conduct the Mela at any cost, it could not decide as to how to rope in the majority of the 300 invited companies, which are yet to give their consent to participate in the event.

It was decided that the department would ask these companies to attend its next meeting scheduled on the third week of February where the date for the Mela would be announced.

A senior official of the department said the software companies and the industries have not informed the department about the number of candidates they would recruit.

“It would be a loss of face for us if we fail in our mission to provide employment to nearly 40,000 candidates who have applied for jobs in the Mela. Keeping this in mind, we have decided to hand over the database of the candidates we have prepared to these companies. Basing on the database of the candidates, the companies will inform us about their requirement, the type and nature of jobs and the salary they would pay. After we get their feedback, we would provide them the candidates of their choice. After the test of the candidates, we would select candidates five to ten times the number of vacancies,” he informed.

Giving details about the test which will be conducted before the Mela, the official said a 90-minute multiple choice computer-based test would be held in two phases.

The first phase of the test of one-hour duration will be on ‘Ability Test comprising Communication and Verbal Aptitude’, ‘Qualitative Ability Test’, ‘Logical Resume’, ‘Computer Ability’ and ‘General Knowledge and Current Affairs’, while the second phase test, of 30 minute duration, will be on subjects from Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and IT. Students of Engineering, M.Tech and Pharmacy having the aforesaid subjects, will appear in the examination.

The total marks for the first and second paper will be 60 and 30 respectively. The question papers would be prepared by a core committee.

“The marks secured by the candidates in the first paper would be displayed in the database through which the companies would select them. Later, the companies will make direct recruitment on the basis of the career marking of the selected students,” the official pointed out.