Over the past four weeks, at least two dozens of top companies have fired their employees.
While we are still waiting to flatten the coronavirus curve in India, we have the first estimate of
job destruction caused by the nationwide lockdown. The numbers are horrifying, worse than
anything the world has ever witnessed before. There is one question in every youth’s mind.
Would The COVID Pandemic Impact Campus Placements?
The Covid-19 crisis is likely to hit the campus placements which are scheduled from the
beginning of July 2020 for the batch of 2021. Although Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal
directed the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to ensure that placements of students are not
affected due to the situation arising out of the coronavirus pandemic. But what about
non-IITians? According to some experts, Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges will be the most affected.
Every day there are updates of industry experts regarding the same. Some say to cover up these
big losses, companies would try to hire more and more people and try to get back in the game.
Some say probably companies would hire only the best ones and hence competition will increase
manifold. None of them is right and at the same time, none of them is wrong. People are still
making guesses about the future. But there are few questions which are disturbing the final year
undergrads. What should I do now? Will I be able to crack a job that I deserve at the same pay
scale which that company offered to the students a year ago? How should I utilize this
quarantine time?
Clearly there is no clarity about campus placements till now. Many of us usually get tense
thinking about this situation. So tensed that in fact doing anything else except building our
resume makes us feel guilty. We feel we are wasting our time and cheating on ourselves. And
this feeling multiplies when we see some of our peers working hard to get good placements.
When we develop these feelings our attention span reduces and we are not able to concentrate on
any work. This is a worldwide pandemic and we can’t do anything to erase it from our lives. We
have to learn to live with COVID-19. If we can’t do anything why should we worry?
In this era of technological advancement, there are now many other options available in every
field. As I belong to computer science background I will take an example to get you a better
understanding of the above statement. These days everybody in computer science is learning to
program. Programming is outstanding if you love to code, debug, and solve problems. But yes
there are other various options that will help you get a job without programming. Some people
don’t like programming and there some who are pressurized to do so because they want to get a
job. Many times we neglect other beautiful options which can be chosen as an alternative to
programming. Try learning Cloud, Cyber Security, Development (JavaScript and modular
frameworks like Node, React, Angular, Vue etc) to get an entry-level job easily without coding.
Just because you are in computer science doesn’t mean you have to be a programmer and need to
learn C++ and Java. In this time everyone is working from home and attending meetings, giving
presentations, pitching, etc. Ever wondered how this is possible? Cloud computing has helped
change the way we do business and has provided more and more workers to work from home
easily with minimum interruptions. A shortage of trained cyber security experts is expected to
leave 1.8 million jobs unfilled by 2022, and the field is growing at three times the rate of other
information technology careers. And yes integrating these cloud and machine learning
algorithms in apps and websites taking care of security is also needed. These can be done by
using different development architectures like NodeJs, PHP, Django, React, Angular, etc. This
goes on to prove how important all these other options are as well! Think about it. There are
many sectors which are not affected because of this pandemic. For eg:- EdTech, Healthcare,
Gaming, Telecom etc. In fact online gaming industry witnesses boom due to COVID-19
Pandemic. So learning physics engine like Unity and Unreal can be beneficial.
While maintaining your professional side is very important, exploring your creative side is
equally important. Initially, when this nation-wide lock-down was announced we used to sit with
our family, spend some time with them, used to listen to our parents telling their childhood
stories, and playing games like ludo, carrom and chess made us happy. It was like having our
childhood days back. But as time passed, we started getting bored. Some are trying to get out
from their boredom by watching Netflix, Prime, Hotstar, etc. Some are trying to study and some
are doing nothing but just taking tension of the future. Boredom isn’t good for health. If you find
yourself consistently bored, this usually means you have a section of time where you don’t have
any activity that meets your needs. The solutions to eliminate boredom are simple. Add a new
goal, challenge or hobby to fill up the time. Especially for undergrads, it has been a long time
since most of us enjoyed our hobbies. Remember those days when in free time you liked to
sketch, paint, write, sing, dance, etc. Before completing our 10th class we filled our extra time
doing stuff that we actually enjoyed. Then we entered a rat race called life. But here we’ve got
another chance to enjoy that stuff again. In this lock-down, we can explore our hobbies and if you
are good at it you can even make a career in it. It’s possible to make any hobby profitable. But it
won’t happen if you just think, get bored and forget.
In conclusion, I would like to say that companies will come but maybe a little later than they
usually do. The worst thing that can happen is they offer students a lower package than earlier. If
you don’t believe me, you can check the GDP graphs of various countries and observe a trend.
Whenever there is a recession, the economy suffers for a period of time and then eventually
booms and finally gets back to normal. I feel that is most likely to happen again in this case. I
would suggest you to keep working towards your goal without worrying for the future and also
think of this time as a great way to explore your lost creative side. I will leave this with a quote –
“As sure as the spring will follow the winter, prosperity and economic growth will
follow recession.”
-Robert Foster Bennett