Exploring business opportunities in the career planning sector

Abstract

Background Information The proposed business idea is highly relevant to the following audience 1. Engineering students in their final and pre-final years 2. Engineering colleges in India and Post-Graduate Universities in India and abroad 3. Corporate who recruit from the pool of Fresher Engineers Dilemma faced by Engineering Students During their final and pre-final years of Engineering, students need to pick the most suitable career option from among the plethora of alternatives in front of them. When making these crucial career choices, students face the following pain points. 1. They rely on the advice of seniors (alumni) who they have to pro-actively approach. 2. They seek counseling from career counselors or browse through online discussion forums. Credibility of this information is often questionable. 3. Information related to different career streams are scattered across the web and not present in a single location. This complicates the task of comparing careers as well. 4. There is little information online regarding the job market, work culture in companies, job sectors, internship and job openings in companies, etc 5. Internship opportunities are few and far between, and are accessible only to a small subset of students 6. Only a few colleges can boast of 100% campus placement at the end of Engineering. Even the toppers from less popular engineering colleges need to find a job by themselves, relying on job fairs, recruitment agencies and online application to different companies. We have identified a few problems in this kind of decision making. We have listed a couple of them below. * The accuracy of the students’ decision depends on their access to sources of critical information. Not all students might be equally gifted in this regard. * The decision making process requires the student to proactively seek information. The level of enthusiasm required might not exist in everyone. Thus, most of the students end up ‘following the crowd’ without bothering about fit between personal interest and career choice. * This kind of decision making is subjective, and depends heavily on the opinion of the sources of information. * Students from less popular engineering colleges enjoy very few internship opportunities and job openings.