Then and Now- What a Change!

2. Getting a Job

J. Chacko

In the fifties and sixties and for that matter till recently, education in our country was something like drifting.  Those who had some means would admit their children in schools but depending on the wherewithal of the families, children would start dropping out from primary school level onwards. Quite a few would stop at matriculation and the others would go to some college for their Pre-Degree classes- there was no 10+2 system those days.  Some would stop at Pre-Degree and the rest would proceed to graduation, and a few lucky ones for post graduation.  Neither the students nor their parents had any idea about the career these youngsters would pursue after the studies but all wanted jobs as early as possible. Only a miniscule minority had the luck to go for professional courses like MBBs or Engineering.

From primary school drop-outs to post graduates, all would be in the job market.  Those unlucky ones who stopped studies at an early stage in schools would be mostly on the look out for daily wage jobs or for any other vocation requiring hard physical labour.   High School and above education would find the person hunting for a salaried job- in clerical positions in small organizations.  Both these categories also had opening in the defence forces- mostly in the Army as Sepoys.

A graduate and above would look for a better position but most of them also would end up as Clerks in Government or in Public or Private Sector.  In all these cases, there used to be a fairly long wait from the time of stopping studies and getting into a job, except ironically for those early school drop-outs, who could start doing something soon after coming out of schools.

Waiting for a job after studies, whatever level these may have been, used to be one of the most agonising experiences for a youngster. His fate was to keep on sending applications, most of which would not even get a response.  In some cases, an interview call would come and at the venue he would find a large number of fellow aspirants eagerly waiting for their chance.  Probability of getting through an interview was thus quite low.  If it was a job in the Government or Public Sector there was yet another step- the written test, for which thousands of candidates would appear.  After a wait of a few months- justifiably as the evaluation of such a large number of answer papers would indeed be time-consuming, interview calls would be received by the successful ones. The whole exercise used to be a rejection process rather than a selection process.  From application to written test to interview to selection/rejection used to take months.

As a result of all these, even before one set of youngsters get any job, the next set would also come into the market, making conditions still worse.  Often in the same household, the elder and younger brothers would both find themselves simultaneously in the job market because the senior fellow was still hunting for a job when the junior fellow completed his studies.  It may also happen that sometimes, the younger fellow may be lucky to find a job while the senior was still in search.  The frustration level of the senior would rise to a new pitch.

Yet another problem was that, to effectively try for a job, one had to be in a metro City or at least in Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Pune etc. as these places had some commercial activities.  A youngster from a village or small town could only keep sending applications to all sorts of places without any result.  As a result, the moment the studies were over, the next attempt would be to find a temporary shelter in one such city. 

Benevolent relatives or friends often provided this.  Some such persons used to go out of their way to accommodate and help kith and kin in search of jobs, often at great inconvenience and at financial strain to themselves. There were others who were totally indifferent and unhelpful.

Most prestigious jobs those days, next to IAS, IPS, IFS etc. were those of probationary officers in Public Sector Banks and the positions in RBI and SBI were particularly coveted.  Annual exercise by SBI for recruiting a limited number of probationary officers used to attract very large number of applicants.

How different are things today!  Prestige associated with PSU jobs has disappeared. Instead of job hunting by candidates, companies come to campus to recruit people and as soon as the students are successfully out of the campus, they are in a company.  Companies also hand out project work to students much before their final year in the college to spot talented ones.  Campus recruitment is not only taking place in IIMs and IITs but even in small graduate colleges. Education is now a focused activity rather than the drifting which it used to be in the past.

Unemployment is still a major problem in our country but the rules of the game have changed. A recent encounter with a youngster about to get married was an eye-opener.  This boy was just a graduate working in a financial services company in a medium town and his fiancée, similarly educated, was employed in another company in a metro city.  This company had no office in the town where the boy was employed.  The girl simply resigned her job and was very confident that she would find one in the place her would be husband was working.  Such a course of action and such confidence was unthinkable in the olden days!