How to land a job (and other things) at NIT Warangal
Note: This article is dedicated to a dear friend, Sai Janeswar who passed away on the 6th of September 2017. He was a Mechanical Engineering graduate of 2013, an amazing artist, designer and above all a wonderful human being. NIT Warangal 101’s several ideas and designs were his brain children. Rest in Peace, Jnani.
We launched a survey to NIT Warangal alumni who graduated in years from 2009 to 2013 for few weeks which ended on 15th September. This survey consisted of questions divided into three sections:
- A person’s student life at NIT Warangal
- Their current worklife
- An imagined life at NIT Warangal based on their experiences after graduation
At the time of launching this survey I just had one idea in my head. If we seek for thoughts from alumni collectively, we could make sense of some trends which could be helpful for current students. So here are the results in a presentable fashion (written over several weeks owing to a full time job that is quite satisfying).
There were 118 respondents in total. 115 were valid responses.
Graduation years are as follows:
And the age of respondents are as follows:
On the basis of conversations I have had, or my friends have had with multiple other peers and juniors, there were some critical questions to answer.
- What should I do to land a job at NIT Warangal?
- How about a second degree?
In this article, I hope to address these two areas.
Out of the 115 respondents, 101 had a campus job. That’s 87.8% of the population.
What about the folks who did not get a campus job?
This group was 14 strong. 3 of them have a second degree, and the assumption is that they did not opt for placements because they wanted to pursue higher education.
Their CGPA split looks like below:
Now, the 3 who are assumed to have pursued higher education had CGPAs of 6 to 7 (two of them) and greater than 9 (one).
Okay, now those who were recruited in campus…
Let’s break it down step by step.
CGPAs
71.2% of the population had CGPAs between 7.0 to 9.0.
Extra Curricular Activities
This is an interesting area. We know how students are eager to get a certificate, be a member of that club or work for a fest to enhance their chances of getting a job because it shows what an all-round person you are. So we asked the alumni what they did.
Out of all those who were recruited in campus:
- 43% were part of a branch association. (Ex: Electrical Engineering Association).
- 43% were either part of the student council (in one of the four years) or a fest (Technozion or SpringSpree) core committee.
- 68% were part of a student club (Ex: Music Club, Painting Club)
It is clear that some were part of more than one of the above.
Out of the 68% (which is 60 students) who were members of a student club, 73% (which is 44 students) held a position in those student clubs in either third or final year.
To do: Join a club or association, or stand for CR election, or volunteer for a fest. Go as far as you want to.
Higher Education
~36% of students who were recruited in campus, have a second degree at the time of survey. We are making a second assumption here that they took up the campus job before pursuing higher education.
This subset has an average work experience of 3 years, against 3.4 years of the entire population.
Satisfaction
How happy are the respondents in their current jobs and how does it match to their previous answers?
The alumni were asked to rate their job satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. Based on the survey norm a score of 1 to 5 was considered low, 6 and 7 was considered medium, and 8 to 10 was considered high satisfaction.
- 85% of all respondents rated their current job satisfaction with medium or high (50% high, 35% medium)
- 15% rated their job satisfaction as low
In my opinion, this is good news. Having good job satisfaction is important for a fulfilling life.
Alright, what’s in it for current students?
In the survey we also asked some questions where alumni would imagine going back to NIT Warangal and things they would have done differently. We had 5 different factors for them to consider.
- Time spent on academics
- Time spent on extra curricular activities
- Time spent socially
- Time spent experimenting/applying what’s learnt in class
- Risk appetite (This means, if given a second chance would you have worked on a difficult project that could’ve failed? Or would you have joined a start-up instead of an MNC? etc.)
The respondents had to rate these five factors in three categories:
- Would they have done more of it?
- Would they have done the same amount of it?
- Would they have done less of it?
I’ve broken this down by different pools of respondents. Fetch answers from a pool that you can mostly connect to or wish to be in.
Low job satisfaction pool
Medium & High job satisfaction pool
Those pressing blue bars do tell us something. Do they? What do you think?
CGPA: 6 to 8 group
CGPA: 8 to 10 group
What clearly stands out is that every group has said they would spend more time than they had on experimenting with what they learnt in class. This could be due to many reasons — one off the top of my head being the working world loves people who have a bias to action, people who apply.
The above charts and respondents’ answers are to be taken with precaution. I’m not trying to tell you, the reader (most likely a current student), that you should spend less time with friends and sit in your room to study. What I’m trying to convey is that, in case you find yourself in a path that doesn’t take you where you want to go, make sure you know how to course-correct. The data presented here might help you.
Conclusion
I hope this is meaningful to current students. In case you have questions, suggestions, criticism or feedback, please feel free to drop a comment here or get in touch with us at http://www.facebook.com/nitw101
Like always, sincere thanks to all the alumni who responded. My apologies for the delay in compiling the survey results.
If you are a data scientist or an enthusiast, feel free to play around with the dataset here. After you do, please share your results/insights with us.
Peace to my friend.
