Design: Swati Sheenum, G Shreethigha, Shaurya Rawat, Abhiram Pavithran O, Rohit Gadarla and Hardhik Pinjala.
T5E’s Exit Survey 2020 was conducted in the month of july to study student’s perspective of studying at IIT Madras. The respondents of the survey were graduating students of the year 2020. The survey witnessed a total of 300 responses. The survey explored various aspects of a student’s life like Lifestyle, Personal, Career, Academics, Extra-curricular and Opinion.
In this article, we explore the career aspect and delve into various career opportunities that a student at IITM has.
Placements
Around 65% of respondents had appeared for placements, while the rest had not. The proportion of UGs appearing for placements was higher than PGs. This may be due to various reasons like higher interest of PGs in research, and so on.
Career Path Ahead
Majority of respondents had secured a job. Business/startup was the least populated option with 1.69% respondents. Moreover, this split-up had virtually no difference across various types of degrees/branches.
4% of people are too tired and they need break for a while, we feel you guys!
Distribution across Sectors
Maximum number of respondents had landed a job in either core sector, or analytics/machine learning/data science. They were followed by IT/Coding and consulting sector. 1.5% of the students also claimed that they do not have a job offer at the moment.
Note that “sector” in the above question indicates the sector of the job profile and not the company itself.
Popularity across Sectors
Around 58% of respondents were seeking a job in the non-core sector. A higher proportion of UGs were seeking a job in the non-core sector than PGs. This may be because of higher number of opportunities available in the non-core sector for UGs and also because of the fact that PGs might be more interested in their core sector.
When the number of core and non-core jobs were tallied across various departments (for both UG and PG), core jobs overtook non-core for CS, EE, BT, OE, MS and AM.
Role of PoRs
Around 56% of respondents found their PoRs useful in securing a job either directly or indirectly, with a larger proportion claiming the latter. 35.3% of the respondents felt that their PoRs were not useful at all in securing the job they got.
Influence by Social Peers
The average rating (when responses were collected on a 1-5 range) was 3.12, with the highest number of responses rating their social circle’s influence as 4. So, overall it does seem like social circle does have a considerable influence on career choices.
Awareness of Career Paths
The average freshie level awareness of various career paths was 2.3 (out of five), with maximum respondents rating it at 1. This does goes to show that many of the students are not entirely aware of all the career choices they have before coming to insti. Many of them figure things out and explore different things after coming to insti once they are aware of all the options.
Clarity on Career Path
4 out of 10 respondents were clear on their options in their penultimate year while 3 out of 10 respondents decided the career they want to pursue in the penultimate year. This may be because most students pursue/apply for an internship in their penultimate year and that does increase the overall awareness of the options available.
Awareness and clarity seemed to go hand in hand, with nearly a third of respondents having some idea of their path ahead in the penultimate year. 22% of respondents, however, were still confused about where they were heading.
Future Plans
A majority of people are planning to stick to the job they have got for the next two years. Of those who are not going to stick to the same job, a majority of them want to change to some other sector or pursue higher studies. 12.4% of the people also want to pursue entrepreneurship after two years of job. There are more number of people who want to pursue entrepreneurship two years down the line than those were pursuing it while in insti itself. This might be because of reasons like job experience before directly jumping into entrepreneurship might be better, financial constraints, and so on.
Higher Studies
A majority of people wanted to pursue an MBA which was closely followed by people wanting to pursue a PhD. Around 12% students were also responded saying they do not want to pursue higher studies in the next 5 years.
Opportunities in Insti
Lack of efficiency was a common concern across varying degree durations, with only mild changes in percentage across degrees. Many people felt they had an opportunity to explore the career they wanted to but didn’t use it efficiently.
Internships
Majority of people had completed 1 or 2 internships while pursuing their respective degrees at IITM. Most of them felt that their internships were pretty helpful while choosing the career they wanted to pursue. There is a very slight positive correlation of this with the number of internships completed i.e people who have done more internships claimed that their internships were more helpful in choosing a career. Does this mean doing more internships is better to figure things out? Well, there is not a clear answer. The correlation between them is 0.19 so it seems like it might be marginally better to do more internships and explore different things to make a decision but this may not be the case for everyone.
Also, students with a higher degree duration reported that they have completed more internships. For example, dual degree students have completed more number of internships than B.Techs.
Summary
Around 65% of respondents appeared for placements. This number was higher in the case of UGs than PGs.
Pursuing a job or higher studies after getting a degree at IITM are the most popular options with a majority of students pursuing a job.
Majority of people are pursuing a job in either ML/DS/Analytics sector or their respective core sectors.
Majority of people sought a job in the non-core sectors with a higher proportion of UG students wanting to go into the non-core sectors as compared to PGs.
Majority of people felt that their PoRs were useful in landing the job they got. Most of these people are undergraduates.
Majority of people felt that their social circle did have an influence on their career choices. Not a lot of people were aware of all the career opportunities available to them at IITM before coming here.
Majority of students chose the career they want to pursue after IITM in their penultimate year.
Most people are planning to stick to their jobs for the next 2 years. Of those, who are planning to not stick to their jobs, are planning to either pursue higher studies or switch to a different sector.
MBA was the most popular choice for people wanting to pursue higher studies followed by PhD and MS.
A lot of people felt that insti did give them the opportunity to explore a career of their choice but they were not able to use it efficiently due to various reasons.
Majority of students have completed 1-2 internships. Students with a higher degree duration have completed a higher number of internships.
Overall, insti does seem to provide a variety of career opportunities for its students. The IIT tag does seem to work well in this aspect. A higher number of people pursuing a job in ML/DS/Analytics does seem to depict the rise of the profile and sector across the world. Majority of people wanting to pursue an MBA sometime down the line may also depict the general trend across engineering colleges in India. A number of people also want to pursue/are pursuing entrepreneurship which depicts the startup culture in the institute and the rise of startup culture in India in the past few years.
This is it from the career aspect. We wish the best for the graduating students in their career ahead!
Stay tuned for more analysis!
Check out other parts of the survey:
