N. Girish, a final year mechanical engineering student at Vellore Institute of Technology, has decided to look for a Government job. Reason: He could not find a satisfactory job through campus placements.

“I cleared the initial rounds in Tata Motors’ campus recruitment last week but failed in the group-discussion round. I got a couple of other offers, but was offered a salary that is too humiliating to mention,’’ he told Business Line.

Worrying trend

There are lakhs of technical graduates who have joined or are trying to find jobs as police constables, bank clerks/officers and civil servants.

According to bankers, all new recruitments are dominated by the B.Techs. The data speaks for itself: State Bank of India, the top recruiter among banks, recently hired 1,500 probationary officers. “About 80-85 per cent of them are graduate engineers,’’ said C.R. Sasikumar, Chief General Manager, SBI.

According to data provided by leading coaching institutes, unlike earlier, the tech-graduate segment is now the largest one seeking jobs in civil services. While the Union Public Service Commission does not release data on candidate profiles on a regular basis, a detailed look into recent results shows the same trend.

Some are forced to join unrelated/lower-level jobs, as police constables, for instance. “Though the minimum qualification is intermediate, we are surprised to find many engineers joining as constables,’’ said a senior official in the AP Police Recruitment Board.

Slowdown Impact

The reasons are not hard to find. According to SBI’s Sasikumar, the economic downturn, downsizing and low salaries in industry are driving B.Techs to bank jobs.

V.S. Rao, Director, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani — Hyderabad campus, said the large number of engineering graduates entering the job market was one of the reasons for this trend.

“Where are the BAs and BComs? Almost everybody wants an engineering degree now and demand exceeds supply in the tech job market.’’

Employability issues, lack of awareness/communication, and mushrooming of engineering educational institutions without quality are also forcing techies to seek other career options.

At the entry level, remuneration has fallen significantly due to the economic slowdown. H. Rajasekhar, a BITS Pilani graduate, was offered Rs 15,000 a month recently by a global company providing search engine solutions.

“This salary makes no sense for me. A bank job is better. I should have studied Economics,’’ he said. He is now studying for the bank exam.

A fallout of this trend is the trouble non-engineer job-seekers face. Thanks to the nature of their engineering courses, tech graduates are easily clearing bank and civil services examinations, which focus on reasoning/quantitative aptitude, enjoying an edge over non-engineering graduates. It remains to be seen if the trend continues once the economy revives.

>naga.gunturi@thehindu.co.in