NEW DELHI: An average annual salary of Rs 17.8 lakh and a highest package of Rs 42.9 lakh is just a routine good placement performance of an IIT, but not for IIT-Madras which made exclusive pitches to corporates for its scholars with disabilities and achieved this feat for them. In the first such effort made by an IIT, 21 of the 38 students with disabilities, graduating from the premiere institute in Chennai, bagged offers from top multinationals, including two big corporates in Japan.
While IIT-Madras has had differently-abled students participate in placement sessions held in previous years, 2021-22 was the first time the institute undertook a “targeted approach” to help them get their deserving job opportunities by compiling a comprehensive database of students with disabilities, mapping job profiles of their interests, and putting them across with to recruiters.
The IIT-Madras placement team made exclusive pitches to companies offering relevant openings that aligned with the interests of these students. This allowed differently-abled students to directly apply for roles tailored to their interests and abilities at the same time.
CS Shankar Ram, outgoing advisor (placements), IIT-M said, “The placement team ensured that the abilities and skill sets of our differently-abled students were matched with suitable job profiles. Recruiters responded positively to this outreach.”
These students got placed across several sectors, including software development and IT, data analytics, hardware engineering and business consulting, among others. The job profiles include full-stack developer, research engineer, data scientist, hardware engineer, associate consultant and business analyst.
“This is just the start,” said Sathyan Subbiah, incoming advisor (placements) adding, “We will expand on these efforts to further increase the number of our differently-abled students placed, with the continued support of the companies.”
As per TB Ramkamal, student academic affairs secretary, the IIT-M placement team took comprehensive steps to make sure students felt included in every step of the process, from the application to the offer acceptance. The placement team also ensured that students with special needs were allotted appropriate extra time for company tests.
Anuj Kumar Singh, a differently-abled student who got placed, said, “It was very helpful for me when the team was accommodative of my needs and slotted the interviews on convenient times.”
Original News Link
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/iit-ms-spl-effort-for-placement-of-disabled-students-a-big-success/articleshow/93417051.cms
