GITAM Career Guidance Center

CGC Infrastructure

The centers are equipped with dedicated control rooms for recruitment teams, interview cubicles, GD rooms, and high-bandwidth routers/ switches in computer labs.

Preparation Activities

CGC conducts a number of activities on the campus to prepare students for the extensive placement processes. The activities include interview prep, career counseling, mock GD, and more.

CGC Team Members and Their Roles

CGC's team structure comprises of the Director of CGC & dedicated faculty members for various areas such as Career Fulfillment, Liaison, Training, Counseling & Mentoring, and Database. Our team is empowered by highly-qualified and knowledgeable educators who strive to offer the best to the students at GITAM. Together the team ensures that the students acquire both, practical experience and knowledge implementation methods to hone their skills.

About

In education, mentoring, coaching and counselling are considered key elements of good capacity-building tools and we are fulfilling this need through CCM. The Career Counselling and Mentoring function helps students receive personalised counselling sessions from their mentors to chart out their professional journey. The unit helps students explore all the available avenues, guides them towards the right career choice, and supports them with required training.

Professional Mentors & Faculty

CCM faculty go through a rigorous training process to enhance their Counselling & Mentoring skills and to get accredited as professional mentors.

Profile and Career Assessment

At the time of joining the institution, GITAM conducts a profile and career assessment of the students to enhance their self-awareness and channelise their true potential to help them make the right career choice.

Initiatives

From the moment students begin their academic journey at GITAM, they can start mapping out their professional journeys as well with the help of accredited mentors from GCGC. The Career Counselling & Mentoring department offers various initiatives powered by third-party global agencies to keep their professional mentors informed, recognise the underlying potential of each GITAMite and maintain a smooth correspondence between the mentor and the mentee.

CCM Team

About the Initiative

Competencies are critical for equipping students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they will need to successfully navigate their personal and professional journeys. The Competence Development initiative aims to guide and facilitate students through this development and application process. The Competence Development centre at GCGC is responsible for providing direction and oversight to the ‘Campus Recruitment Training’ and ‘Campus Placement’ initiatives of GITAM.

Connecting the Academic and Real World

The Competence Development initiative interfaces with the industry and potential employers to find and fill knowledge and skill gaps that emerge between the academic and the real world.

Being Industry Ready

The desired outcome of this initiative is to upskill GITAMites during their time on the campus and provide them with a competitive advantage as they step out into the industrial premises.

Focussed Competencies

• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Problem solving
• Collaboration
• Managing Information
• Cultural and Global Citizenship
• Creativity and Innovation
• Personal Growth and Well-being

Focus Area list

• Ensuring that students participating in the GCGC programme possess adequate coding skills in line with the employer and industry demands
• Creating strategies to fill the identified gaps and leverage emerging job opportunities
• Planning and identification of in-demand skills set
• Preparation of a Competency Development Plan
• Student counselling & mentoring for attitudinal orientation towards the modern workplace
• Execution of the Competency Development Plan
• Extensive practice in the application of skills through a structured approach
• Prompt constructive feedback sessions
• Continuous monitoring & development
• Standard post-assessment report and feedback

Online Coding Assessment Platform

In an increasingly IT-enabled world, participants in the workforce in most industries would need to possess some essential IT and Software Coding Skills. And so, GCGC recognises the need to provide students with a ‘Competitive Coding Platform’ that prepares them with the necessary coding skills.

Dr. Rojeena Mathew
Director, Competence Development

Resources list

Related links

• Media
• News
• About GITAM

Contact details

Dr. Rojeena Mathew
Director, Competence Development
director_competencedev_gcgc@gitam.edu

About

Times are changing and so are the aspirations of the new-age students. The biggest challenge for an academic institution is to understand the latent needs of diversified students and channelise their energies in the right direction. This generation is ready to break free from conventional moulds and take risks and experiment with their choice of preferences. The main objective of Career Fulfillment is to address this need and create an atmosphere for students to explore career preferences independently.

Vision

To develop the right competency strategies as per industry skill requirements and empower students of GITAM to pursue their dream careers.

Mission

To identify competency gaps between the academic curriculum and employer requirements, bridge these gaps through appropriate training strategies, and implement contemporary skill

Exploring Other Career Options (OCO)

This strategic initiative was established with an aim of facilitating an ecosystem of in-house training and expert guidance for students aspiring for alternate career options. The Other Career Options department is led by an enthusiastic team that handles any query relating to alternate career preferences. The Directorate of OCO works in close quarters with the Directorate of External Relations to create an opportunity for dynamic communication between well-settled GITAM Alumni and existing students.

Team

Dr. B. Ravikanth
Deputy Director,
Career Counselling & Mentoring & Other Career Options

Related Links

• Career Counselling & Mentorship
• Recruiting Partners
• About GITAM

About the Platform

In an increasingly IT-driven world, students need competitive coding skills to be benchmarked on a widely accepted standard to improve the visibility of the talent pool. Addressing the requirement, GCGC introduced a ‘Competitive Coding Platform' for GITAMites to prepare them with the necessary coding skills.

Increased Competitive Edge

The platform permits the institute as well as potential employers to have direct access to a quantified measure of every student's coding skill on a ‘Global Scoreboard’ that includes institutes of repute, such as IITs and NITs.

Empowering Soft Skills

Technical competencies, like computer programming and application development, lay the foundation for skills, such as critical and abstract thinking, persistence, entrepreneurial skills, and soon.

Target Audience

Pre-Final Year Engineering Students

Syllabus list

Mentor Development Programme

Designated faculty undergoes this programme, conducted by TalentMetrix Human Capital Management Solutions, to be accredited as professional faculty mentors and guide students.

Target Audience:Faculty Designated to be Mentors

The programme entails the following -

1. An assessment of the designated faculty using the DISC personality assessment.
2. A 20-hour classroom session with a batch of 25 faculty covering the understanding of personality types and a practical approach to Core Mentoring.
3. Accreditation of the faculty as "Certified Behaviour & Mentoring Analyst (CBMA)" after clearing module requirements like case analysis, mock debrief and online assessment test.
4. A total of 316 faculty members from GITAM were a part of the first Mentor Development Programme conducted in January 2021. Currently, 285 faculty have been accredited as CBMA.

Student Assessments

Every GITAM student is required to take an assessment conducted by Career Success and powered by Shirtlist.com. These assessments comprise of three modules:

• Self Discovery
• Career Discovery
• Personal Branding

On completion of the assessments, the students receive an assessment report that provides insights into the students' intellectual inclinations. The students can further opt to receive personalised counselling from certified mentors based on these reports.

Mentoring Applications

The faculty mentors use a mentoring app, designed by eMpact.ai to stay connected with their mentees. The mentoring app ensures smooth scheduling of appointments between both parties, recording key takeaways discussed during the meetings, giving feedback, and creating resume. This enables a clear tracking of the mentoring process, giving GCGC the indication to implement corrective measures as and when required. The mentoring app is amended regularly by conducting a simulation with faculty and students and soliciting feedback and suggestions from the users.

Orientation to Faculty Mentors

An orientation was conducted by GCGC to include the faculty mentors and academic leaders, where the faculty was briefed about the vision, mission, and structure of the newly incorporated GITAM Career Guidance Center (GCGC). This included an orientation of the uniformity in the mentoring system across the University, the support systems available for the mentors to ensure smooth sailing of the mentoring process, and contemporary career opportunities that students are interested in the new mentoring system came into effect in May 2021 and has been implemented for the students in AY 2020-21.