• The Chai Sip
  • Posts
  • 🧑🏻‍🎓 IT Hiring Slowdown Worries Students and Colleges

🧑🏻‍🎓 IT Hiring Slowdown Worries Students and Colleges

Today: IT Hiring Slowdown; Don’t Believe Your Brain; AI: Friend or Foe of Job Seekers?

Author

Chai Sip
May 08, 2023

ISSUE #067

☕ Good Morning! Sippers,

👨‍🎓 Meet S Damodhar, a fourth-year engineering student in a leading Chennai college, who felt nervous as he read underwhelming IT services company results in the newspaper.

He worried these companies might reduce hiring from colleges. It’s not only students like Damodhar who are concerned but also the colleges themselves.

In today’s Issue 📬 :

  • IT Hiring Slowdown.

  • Don’t Believe Your Brain.

  • AI: Friend or Foe of Job Seekers?

SIP WORTHY

IT Hiring Slowdown Worries Students and Colleges

👨‍💼 Co-founder of specialist staffing company Xpheno, Kamal Karanth, says that freshers and entry-level intakes in the IT industry dropped significantly from nearly 6 lakh in FY2022 to an estimated 2.5 lakh in FY2023. The current outlook for fresher intake is around 1.5 lakh hires range for FY2024, which could increase to two lakh if enterprises decide to hire more freshers than lateral hires.

🎓 With current and projected fresher intakes at low levels, engineering institutions are preparing for increased friction during this recruitment slowdown. However, pass-out rates have dropped from 83% in 2017-2018 to 61% in 2021-2022.

This combined effect of lower pass-out rates and industry hiring will affect the desirability of engineering courses and consequently enrolment rates.

🏫 According to some placement officers, this recruitment slowdown depends on the branding and the relationship that the colleges have with various companies. The top 10-15 colleges will have a better chance of success than the rest.

💼 Companies are looking for candidates with digital skills in data analytics, IoT, AI, and blockchain technology. Institutions such as Sastra University, which introduced B.Tech courses in these domains three years ago, can meet industry demands. For the current 2023 batch, Sastra hosted 250 recruiters and received around 3,700 offers.

💻 IT service companies have cushioned the impact with strong bench strength, and this year Global Capability Centres (GCC) of various MNCs will continue to support many engineering colleges. This trend is expected to continue as companies like Appian.com, a US software company that automates business processes for clients, plan to collaborate and recruit bright talent from the university.

🚀 “We had a similar situation in 2008, and it taught us to be prepared for the worst. We have been providing quality industry-ready students to companies. We will sail through this cycle,” says KK Sivagnana Prabhu, Dean, Career Development Centre, RMK Group of Institutions.

👩‍💼 While the number of offers may decrease compared to previous years, it will not come to zero. Top-tier institutions such as Sastra have good talent. “We are positive, and we can withstand any pressure,” says V Badrinath, Dean, Corporate Relations and School of Management, Sastra University, Thanjavur.

IMPROVEMENT SIP

Don’t Believe Your Brain: The Availability Heuristic is Making You Think the World Is Worse than it Actually Is

Humans are vulnerable to a variety of cognitive biases, including the Availability Heuristic. This happens when we exaggerate the frequency or significance of events that come to mind quickly.

As our views are formed by our memories, media exposure, and personal experiences, this can lead to incorrect judgments of risk, prevalence, and impact.

According to psychologist Daniel Kahneman, “The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.” In other words, because we rely on heuristics rather than hard data, our mental shortcuts can lead us astray.

The impression of crime rates is one example of this bias. Despite falling violent crime rates in many nations, people frequently overestimate their chances of becoming a victim of crime. “It’s not that there’s no crime; it’s that the rate of crime has gone down so much that it’s way below the level of public attention,” Pinker observes.

Another example is apprehension about flying. While flying is generally safer than driving, many individuals are frightened of flying due to vivid recollections of plane crashes and accident coverage in the media. According to Kahneman, “the dread of airline disasters is increased by their spectacular nature and the vivid imagery they generate in the media.”

Accessibility People may make decisions based on prominent instances rather than actual probabilities, which has ramifications for decision-making. People may be more likely to invest in a stock that has previously done well, even if this is not a solid predictor of future performance. Similarly, people may avoid specific foods or activities based on anecdotes or rare events rather than scientific data.

Finally, the Availability A heuristic bias is a type of bias that influences our perceptions, judgments, and conclusions. Understanding how our minds work allows us to recognize and overcome this bias, allowing us to make more educated decisions based on factual data and analysis.

According to Amos Tversky, a social psychologist, “The unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because it is designed to jump to conclusions.” We can avoid these errors and navigate the world more effectively if we use critical thinking and factual facts.

HOT SIP

AI: Friend or Foe of Job Seekers? The Future is Uncoded!

What’s sipping? ☕ In 2017, Mark Cuban warned about the importance of understanding AI. Now, he predicts that the highest-paying college major, computer science, will hold very little value for employers in the future due to AI’s increasing capabilities.

On Monday, Hollywood writers protested against AI involvement in writing scripts, highlighting the struggle between proper attribution and copyright about generative AI technology. The WGA’s lead negotiator called AI “plagiarism machines”.

🎥🤖Hollywood Writers’ Protest: A Struggle for Proper Attribution and Copyright

Comedy writer Adam Conover proposed that output from AI should not be considered writers’ work. However, Cuban argued that someone must understand the topic to define the AI. Despite this, some argue that computer science degrees will be needed to understand these systems. Yann LeCun, chief of AI at Meta, tweeted that AI won’t cause instant mass unemployment, but will displace jobs over time and make people more productive. Similarly, Richard Baldwin said, “AI won’t take your job, it’s somebody using AI that will take your job.”

🤝👥AI as a Teammate: Making Humans Super Great

Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, wants to “make humans super great.” This happens when we move from denial to acceptance and eventually adoption of AI. But the fact remains that humans need to be trained just like AI models to be unbiased and more capable.

The current AI technologies are creating a disruption in the market, with businesses, enterprises, and employees increasingly scared about the rapid AI developments. Companies like IBM are even replacing people for jobs that AI can do. Who knows what the future holds for jobs?

🤖👩‍💻AI and Jobs: The Future of Work

The roles of writers in Hollywood are at stake, but perhaps they should adopt the idea of AI into their workings. It’s too early to tell if AI will add more jobs or replace them, but for now, the layoffs are on.

The disruption caused by new AI models is visible in every field and sector. While the risk of AI eliminating jobs is real, Satya Nadella believes that AI also has the potential to create more jobs. Only time will tell what the future of work looks like with AI.

QUICK SIPS

Keep On Keepin’ On.

Remote work is one of the biggest mistakes made by the technology industry.

Bengaluru entrepreneur’s response to a scammer offering a job on WhatsApp is viral.

The Finality of Everything.

‘Kaun dadaji har roz light off kar dete hai’: Ashneer Grover.

AI-generated images of Sir Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani…

Hope is an Embrace of the Unknown.

With CHAI ☕

🌊 Ceo: Billionaire Sea CEO Declares 5% Raises in Strong Rebound Signal.

🎁 How to: choose the best financial gift for your mother.

🐼 Aww: Red Panda!

🗽 It’s Interesting: The Statue of Liberty used to be a lighthouse.

TWEET