Placement Day Zero

Today marked the pilot launch of my program, NEN Startup Jobs. We organized a recruiting event at IIIT-Bangalore in Electronic City, and the results were revolutionary: Out of 64 graduating students, 18 accepted job offers from 6 startups.

... dramatic pause ...

In case you don't grasp the magnitude of this achievement, allow me to quote IIIT-B director Prof. S. Sadagopan: 18 students accepting startup job offers is the "highest of any institute" in India. Further, I would posit that, in percentages, this statistic is one of the highest of any educational institution in the world.

A great amount of the event's success is attributed to the maturity of the students, who embodied an institutional spirit of entrepreneurship and benefited from years of NEN-led consulting, programming, and education. Also, Day Zero's success is owed to a carefully chosen group of startups that brought open minds and top-level management to the event. From informative talks to a unique Student-Startup Speed Dating session, everyone was swept away in the fun-filled experiment that was Placement Day Zero.

In Who Do You Want to be in 10 Years?, I talked about some of the problems plaguing the Indian education system, especially around student employability and recruiting. As some of you noted, we're tired of hearing about the problems; let's discuss solutions!

Closing the loop, I'd like to share some thoughts on the solution that incorporates lessons from Day Zero:

1. Institutionalization. One must work with the largest supplier of human capital in India - the educational institutes - to spark students' entrepreneurial ambitions and to introduce startups as a placement option. As an example, the full-fledged support of the IIIT-B administration enabled Day Zero to result in unprecedented recruiting success for startups. It could not have happened in a one-off, off-campus recruiting event or through a Naukri.com for startups.
2. Orientation. Job seekers must be oriented about startup work and life before considering it as a placement option. Entrepreneurship, and startup jobs, is not for everyone, and job seekers need to understand why!
   
3. Screening. Students and startups should be screened before setting them loose on each other. This screening results in exclusivity, infusing an element of trust in subsequent interactions and increasing the desirability of startup jobs. Startups require the best talent, not the leftovers. Analogously, students want to work at high-potential startups that can provide some semblance of job security.
   

The next step for Startup Jobs is to take this model of recruiting and seed it in other top-tier institutes in the NEN network. Stay tuned for an official launch of the program in August!

More Information

• Press coverage of Placement Day Zero [Hindu | TOI | Indian Express]
• Bloggers coverage of the event [Sadagopan]
  
• Pictures from the event [NEN Online]
  
• Participating companies included 8KMiles, Allgo Embedded Systems, Mango Techno, Mobisy, Outdu, Perfint Healthcare, ReadiMinds, redBus.in, Tyfone, and Yos Technologies