Best brains through campus

Chennai: As another round of placement begins on campus, many companies are considering expanding their search for talent to institutes that nurture talents beyond the boundaries of metros and well established campuses.

As a number of companies find it difficult to travel the length and breadth of the country to recruit students, they are exploring the option of allowing them to log on, crack a code and get a step closer to finding a job. From Google to TCS, the search is on for code breakers.

Apart from campus placements, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) also started recruiting students through Code Vita, a competition where the student showcases his skills against contestants around the globe. Wipro has also been conducting Earthian competition to motivate student projects.

Google conducts Code Jam, asking students to crack coding puzzles online and students who clear the contest go to the next round of recruitment. Facebook runs a similar contest too. The top successful coders from round 1 in Code Vita will get test exemption from the selection process, states the TCS campuscommune portal.

It is not only IT companies, which are now recruiting students through competition based tests. A few core companies like National Instruments (Niyantra) and Texas Instruments (Innovation Challenge: India) also do similar tests.

Prof S. Santhosh Baboo, head of the computer science department (under-graduate) at D.G. Vaishanav college in the city said that this would largely help students from the rural areas as several companies recruit students directly from city colleges.

“This also makes selection process simpler for companies as they get best brains easily and good students too get identified,” he said.

Welcoming the competitions, career counsellor Jayaprakash A.Gandhi says these competitions turn out to be a win-win situation for both students and the company. “When students from tier-2 and 3 colleges win the competition, companies will come to know about the college as it is not possible for companies to go all around the country to recruit students,” he said.

Pointing out that these competitions were open to third and final year students, Mr Gandhi said that companies now encourage even students in the first year to take these tests so that they would get a better idea in the third year.

“Soon the percentage of students getting placed through competitions will increase as companies are looking at talent not the institution,” he said.