The blue-collar workforce is the foundation of manufacturing industries, and having the qualitative approach of hiring workers at this level is becoming a necessity.

The conventional hiring method includes a lot of manual steps which reduce the productivity of all the stakeholders involved in the process. Thus, companies need to change the ways they hire blue-collar workforce. An online assessment tool is one of the best possible ways to hire an individual who can be the right fit for such roles while maintaining the efficiency of the stakeholders involved in the hiring process.

What is the current hiring methodology?

According to research, on average, talent acquisition professionals spend nearly 1/3 of their workweek (about 13 hours) sourcing candidates for a single role. Nearly 1 in 3 respondents spend over 20 hours.^[1] This type of hiring method includes a lot of paperwork and manual tasks. Also, the HR professionals search candidates on online portals, through newspaper advertisements and posting about the opening on their company portal, etc. Consequently, the recruitment process takes many weeks in finding the perfect fit for the role.

Why should companies prefer an online assessment tool for hiring?

The conventional methods of information gathering, such as resumes, and interviews do not often result in the desired outcomes. Research indicates that up to 78% of resumes contain misleading statements.^[2] Likewise, unstructured interviews do not yield desired results.

On the contrary, properly developed and validated assessment tools help firms in hiring skilled candidates, reducing their hiring time and cost while ensuring the quality of hires. The assessment used is scientifically designed which takes the needs of the job role into account closely. Another advantage of the online assessment tool is that after the assessment, the score is generated by the system immediately & shared with the company to shortlist the candidates followed by the subsequent rounds.

What are the key parameters evaluated in a standard assessment?

Our end to end assessment solution screens candidates based on their cognitive abilities, domain knowledge and on-the-job behaviour. This screening is performed by testing a candidate’s readiness for the appropriate competencies, which are key determinants of their on-the-job performance for roles in the manufacturing sector.

1. Cognitive – Cognitive assessments check a candidate’s learning agility, reasoning ability, problem-solving skills, attention to detail and ability to think abstractly.

2. Domain – Domain assessments are knowledge and skill-based tests which assess a candidate’s proficiency level concerning a domain. They are composed of objective items that assess the knowledge and application of concepts based on the technical competencies expected of a candidate.

3. Behavioural – Behavioural/Personality Assessments directly assess the job-specific behaviour of a person in specific situations which he/she is likely to encounter in such a job. These items serve as a real-life preview of the situations faced during the job.

An intelligent online assessment tool frees up the bandwidth of hiring managers and members of interview panels. Now, they have more time to prepare for the interviews and learn about the candidates for better decision making.

Benefits of adding an online assessment in the hiring process of Blue-collar employees

As mentioned above, online assessment tool not only streamlines the hiring process but also ensures the specific behaviour of the new employees in specific situations which he/she is likely to encounter during the job. Here are a few of the many benefits of using an online assessment tool for blue-collar hiring:

Hence, smarter processes result in candidates that are better fit and result in saving cost and time.

Case Study:

A leading automobile firm wanted to adopt a reliable and fair method to assess temporary blue-collar workers. The aim was to sift out the properly trained workers and offer them permanent positions. They were looking for a solution which can select the deserving candidates without being biased and focused on one’s skills and knowledge. The recommended “Online Assessment Tool” seems to be the best possible solution to ensure the right hiring outcomes.

Impact:

1. Unbiased and valid process.
2. 500 candidates were offered from a large pool of candidates.

About the Author:

Disha has done Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering and has been working for 3 years as Senior Associate – Content Development at Aon’s Assessment Solutions. She has expertise in designing technical assessments and providing hiring solutions to clients pertaining to Manufacturing and other related industries.

References:

1. Entelo’s 2018 Recruiting Trends Report
2. Employment and Staffing, Truth About Lies

For a long time, HR processes have been based on individual perceptions, ideas, intuitions and specific cultural practices rather than actual data from the ground. Using an approach that does not always derive from or marry facts and data results in adverse outcomes that manifest themselves in different ways. For example, see the results of a survey by CareerBuilder (2017):

 

Hence, it is important to look at talent and related processes objectively through data.

In this blog, I have tried to highlight a few scenarios on how capturing and interpreting different types of data at different Talent Acquisition stages can help improve outcomes. 

Demographics

Demographics such as age, location, gender, educational level etc. of candidates are quite easily available across stages of the hiring process. Many aspects like performance, stability, motivation vary by demographics within the organization or even within the same job role.

Using inferences from the demographic data of already hired candidates can help recruiters figure out the hotspot of favourable pool in terms of quality or quantity of candidates geographically. HR Managers can compare the performance of candidates by demographics. This may lead them to discover differences by job role type and derive a success profile based on demographics, and thus focus on success profile for that role.

According to a study done by the Department of Lifelong Learning (India), the performance of employees generally increases with age up to 45 years and decreases gradually after that. HR should evaluate performance by age groups for different roles and target favourable ones to optimize processes and save cost.

Here is a sample analysis of average assessment performance (scores, let’s say) which can help focus on specific age group for a role/level to save bandwidth while conducting assessments for hiring. Low performance on assessment indicates low suitability for that role (higher experience level candidates in below example).

Talent Characteristics

Skills, knowledge, abilities, and personality are the most critical attributes of any employee leading to high job performance and thus organization growth, and so these should be considered while hiring a candidate. But how can this data be obtained?

Assessments and interviews/ personal interaction can capture a lot of data on talent characteristics of employees or candidates. For example, for a job role, assessments data can help organizations get the required type and level of cognitive ability or preferred behavioural traits. By looking at concurrent data of incumbents, recruiters can also benchmark for internal standards or get a typical candidate profile that is desirable to hire.

Many organizations working with us use different score benchmarks for the same job role with different experience levels. For example, an organization may accept candidates above a certain cutoff on a skill assessment for a role with 0-2 years’ experience, while using a higher benchmark for candidates experienced for 2-4 years.

In summary, key metrics that HR can get leveraging talent characteristics data are:

• Competency types
• Competency levels by roles
• Benchmarks, Norms for different roles

Selection Data

Offering the right fit candidate is not the endpoint of getting data; the journey should continue and deep-dive analysis into selection data can help optimize the process further.

Here are some typical data points that can easily be considered:

1. Selection/ Rejection numbers: The overall pipeline and bottlenecks of the process can be figured out. Bottlenecks can be sourcing, assessments, interviews (technical or HR round) etc. and steps can be taken to improve the conversion at that stage.

Typical analysis can look as shown below:

Metrics like offer ratio, joining ratio, assessment throughput, footfall for interviews etc. can provide insights on bottlenecks or stages where improvement is required. This can be done by comparing organization-specific numbers with industry averages for similar roles.

HR can also capture subjective rejection reasons during interviews and come up with filtering criteria that can reject candidates with that profile beforehand to save interview bandwidth and hiring cost.

2. Time to hire: Time is money, and this holds true for recruitment as well. The process should be quick enough to avoid any business loss due to unfilled critical job roles and thus it is essential to figure out the steps consuming more time than expected.

According to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, the average time taken to fill a position is 41 days. But with a tighter talent market and increased hiring volume, recruiting teams are facing increasing pressure to reduce their time to fill vacancies.

Tracking the time to hire by role, level, geography and comparing with benchmarks in the industry can improve their hiring cycle by optimizing processes for specific roles, geography etc.

3. Cost of hire: It is crucial to have a solid estimate of the cost of hire, including paid sources, assessment cost, HRIS systems, recruiting events, etc. This figure can help you make smarter investment decisions, define your referral bonuses and save the organization money.

4. Attrition data: Attrition data assists in ascertaining some specifics, like how long employees worked before leaving, reasons for departure, positions worked and types of employees who left. These specifics represent areas that need more attention and improvement, thus optimizing the hiring model.

Here is a possible scenario which can help figure out the profiles to be focused on reducing the overall high attrition rate in the organization. Clearly, Profile 1 and Profile 2 have significantly high attrition rate versus others.

Performance Data

Measuring employee performance through captured data can help identify under-performers and outstanding employees and thus manage compensation & benefits accordingly to make efficient teams.

Performance data can also be used for assessment validation, job analysis and benchmarking while designing assessments thus putting together a correct selection model in place.

Many of our clients conducted assessment validation (running customized assessment on their internal employees) and data showed that some of the competencies highly recommended for concerned job role had quite low correlations with actual job performance. Many factors including organization culture, market type etc. may lead to stark differences in an ideal job role and linked competencies. Using such analyses can help in correcting incorrect perceptions around job roles specific to organizations.

Challenges with HR Data and the Way Out

1. Bringing Together Data from Different Places

Data initiative requires HR to acquire data from all the different departments within the business. They have to acquire, sanitize, unify, and analyze data from multiple departments as well as from multiple business functions.

To solve this problem, HR needs to have people with skills to gather and prepare data, in addition to performing analysis.

    2. Worries About Privacy and Compliance

When HR collects data on a candidate, particularly data from outside the company, the department has to consider privacy.

However, a lot of data can be used post whitelisting (without personal details) which can serve the purpose of analysis, without breaching someone’s privacy.

   3. Business buy-ins and approvals

Getting approvals around data sharing with assessment partners for deeper analysis is sometimes a challenge. Bottlenecks on such approvals and buy-ins lead to insufficient data availability, and eventually to low impact analytics.

HR managers need to be able to show end outcomes and partner with business for the entire life-cycle of the candidate, rather than have a relationship limited to delivering hired candidates. Data sharing expectations should be established at the beginning of cycle/hiring process along with expected outcomes.

   4. Low confidence in model/ data-based processes

To many HR managers, the idea of implementing people analytics equals letting computers decide whom to hire.

Although the desire to be ethical by sidelining computers is commendable, using all available tools to hire the right people for the right jobs is the ultimate goal for HR.

Glimpses of the real world

We have been helping clients figure out their specific Talent Acquisition problem through data and help with a solution to get rid of that. Here are a few examples of multiple scenarios.

Case 1:

Challenge: Recruiting over 700 employees per year from 7,00,000+ applications

Solution: A realistic job preview was designed and built into the client’s careers portal to help applicants decide themselves whether they wanted that job or not

Impact:

 

Case 2:

Challenge: Facing more than 100% attrition at a specific level of front-line sales role

Solution:

1. A customized predictive hiring assessment was designed through detailed job analysis and internal validation
2. The hiring managers were trained on system administration & interviewing skills
3. Talent Acquisition Analytics was carried out – Candidate Success profiling & factors influencing the quality of hire

Impact:

Case 3:

Challenge: Hire 9000+ candidates for a Business Process Outsourcing role at 7 different locations in India through a scientific and consistent process across regions, bringing in better efficiency and adding value to operations and candidate recruitment

Solution:

1. Custom designed Cognitive ability assessment and benchmarks with a short administration duration of 20-25 minutes
2. Assessments conducted at client offices across 7 locations in India through a structured walk-in process
3. Webcam enabled online proctoring ensured that candidates were monitored

Impact:

1. Approximately, 9600 candidates were offered from the larger pool of assessed candidates
2. 4X improvement in hired candidate quality in a year

About the Author:

Rishabh Saxena is the Senior Talent Analyst at Aon’s Assessment Solutions. He is an expert in helping organizations across industries and specializations solve talent problems through data based insights.

References:

http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-12-07-Nearly-Three-in-Four-Employers-Affected-by-a-Bad-Hire-According-to-a-Recent-CareerBuilder-Survey

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e90d/96ca8a81576aa5f6ab8dd6503e5e452b6b2b.pdf

https://www.hirevue.com/blog/5-reasons-hr-struggles-with-using-big-data

https://care.icims.com/resource/1520439224000/BestPracticesHMRollingOut

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Documents/Talent-Acquisition-Recruitment.pdf

It has begun. You’re in a college. In 2-4 years, you will be ready to spread your wings and take flight to a wonderful career. But are you employable?

People often think that being hired in a decent company or scoring the job role you want is about luck, or how smart you are already. You may have thought so yourself. “He’s so good at speaking English”, “She scored so well in her Board exams”, “My entire class is so much smarter than me”.

But it is not impossible to get your dream job, if you know what you need to be a good fit for the role.

What does it take to be placed?

Imagine a company that is looking for engineers. What would you want your employee to know, or be able to do?

A good employee for such a company will have to be a good engineer. If you’re applying for such a role, you’ll probably become a decent engineer, as you progress through your engineering degree, as long as you keep attending classes and do your assignments.

But there are other skills that companies test, and you don’t need to finish your degree to refine them, or attend extra classes to learn them, like for coding, for example.

Hone your Aptitude!

There are three elements of aptitude that companies always test candidates for, which you can start preparing right now. These are English, Analytical Reasoning and Quantitative Ability. The earlier you start, the better you will perform in these. A high score in Aptitude can take you a step closer to the job you are aiming for. It doesn’t matter how you’ve performed in these subjects before. Here are some quick tips on how to start preparing for Aptitude tests, one section at a time.

English Usage

You need to be able to frame sentences properly, know where to put articles, what words mean and how they are used. Most companies test the basics of grammar and punctuation, and almost all companies test Reading Comprehension. So, how do you prepare for these?

• Read, read and read. It doesn’t have to be a novel if you don’t enjoy long books. Pick up something small and go as slow or as fast as you like. Pick a newspaper you like and read the Editorial and the guest columns. This will also boost your GK, and GD skills for interviews.
• Keep a dictionary app on your cellphone or keep a dictionary in handy when you sit down to read. Try to figure out meanings of difficult or new words, and later check them in the dictionary. This will enormously improve your Reading Comprehension skills.
• Increase your exposure to English content: Watch English movies, TV series, YouTube videos, gaming streams, whatever you like. Practicing English doesn’t have to be all serious or boring.
• Go through a few books on vocabulary and Grammar. A few popular titles like Word Power Made Easy, and Wren and Martin are nice options to try out.

 Analytical Ability

Scoring high in Analytical Ability requires being able to crack the pattern of a series, being able to arrange things under certain conditions and constraints, thinking visually, coding and decoding words and letters of the alphabet, and dealing with new types of puzzles, thinking on your feet. While a lot of this is dependent upon your natural logical abilities, you can learn how to structure your solutions better, and learn about the type of questions usually asked, which can help you score better in such assessments. Here’s how.

• Solve puzzles. This can be the daily newspaper crossword, a Sudoku, brain teasers, riddles and other kinds of puzzles. This can help you think visually, think out of the box, recall information quickly and arrange things to suit a given set of conditions.
• Play with words and information. Read about skills like critical and lateral thinking and practice them, reason what can make things similar and not so similar. This will help you in sections such as Odd One Out, Directions, Analogies and other such types of questions that many think are tricky.
• Pick up a popular puzzle book, like Puzzles to Puzzle you by Shakuntala Devi for example, and solve a couple of puzzles every week. This can be entertaining to do on Sundays.

Quantitative Ability

You don’t have to be a math wizard to score well in Quantitative ability. The Quant section is more about gauging your ability to deal with day to day use of numbers. If you are familiar with your basic mathematics (say from class 6^th to 10^th), you’re probably going to score well. But you can always aim to be better. Here’s how…

• Practice, practice and practice. There’s so much math to wrap one’s head around in the college curriculum that one often forgets the math they learned in school. Pick up a book on Quantitative Ability and solve one exercise per day.
• Make cheat-sheets or flashcards of formulae and identities you often forget. Keep referring to them every now and then!
• Try to think of quicker ways of getting through a problem. Refer to YouTube tutorials, or ask your teachers if they know some quick tricks, if they’re game. They’ll probably have a lot of fun shortcuts to share.

It’s also essential to keep testing oneself on these topics, so that all this practice you do can be personally checked, and so you may devote more time and energy to topics or sections you find yourself to be weak in. In fact, you should also keep assessing where you stand when it comes to the technical knowledge and understanding gained every year of your bachelor’s degree. The CoCubes Continuous Evaluation Programme has been designed to help students test their readiness in both Aptitude as well as Engineering subjects you may have learned that same year. Your goals become more achievable if you can keep track of your progress.

With all this practice, slowly but surely, you will get good even at sections you think you’re not good at. And by the time placement season arrives, you’ll be way ahead of your competition when it comes to assessments!

But what about group discussions and placement interviews?

Group discussions and placement interviews are important too, but there is no specific direction you can predict that these will take. Nevertheless, most recruiters test if you have a basic understanding of your job role, if you can perform well in the company environment and what your perspectives in life are. Here are some practices to adapt that can help you in group discussions and placement interviews.

• Research about the role you want to take up. If you dream of being a Software Developer, read as much as you can on what a Software Developer does, what he/she needs to know, which subjects you are required to be good at for that role, and what the latest developments in the field are.
• To give yourself confidence in your spoken English, start practicing now! Speak with your friends in English. More importantly, start thinking in English. Most people think more than they ever put into words. You’ll get a lot of additional practice this way and become faster and more confident in English speaking.
• Keep yourself aware of current affairs. This will help you in your GD sessions. Form your own opinions, by thinking critically and by reading a variety of literature on the same.
• Learn about yourself, and about where you were born, where you were brought up, where your college is and other places around it. Learn about the history of the place, the geography and the culture. Most recruiters appreciate candidates who are aware and appreciative of their environment. And yes, Be honest!
• Have a hobby. Do something that makes you happy. Or do something that spreads happiness. It will add a neat set of extra-curricular activities to your CV, which companies regard very highly.

Getting a good placement is easy, provided you start in earnest and keep at it. A little bit of effort every day will go a long way in making your dreams come true.

Aon CoCubes is committed to helping students achieve their career aims. Please do ask questions you’d like our assessment experts to write on in the comments section.

Contributed By – Saksham Bhatnagar

Assessment Team, Aon’s Assessment Solutions

As an Electron­ics and Communication engineering student, I was always concerned about my future in this domain because I had no idea of the job prospects. While exploring the career opportunities and the areas where I can grow myself, I came across a wide variety of information. A chaotic mind cannot focus on the course to a successful career!  So, here are some insights into the prospects of the electronics industry to aid, clear your vision and my journey of how I built a career in this domain.

What is the story on the ground for an Electronics engineer?

I decided to examine the ground reality of this domain and found out that despite so many roads to a successful career, electronics engineers struggle through getting their dream jobs. Some of the reasons are:

• Mismatch of skills: This is the most common problem experienced by an engineering graduate today. Engineers pass out of college and hope to start working but soon realize that the employers are looking for skills they never built. For example, a candidate seeking a job in circuit designing does not have a basic understanding of a PCB layout. Core companies typically look for candidates who have knowledge of analog and digital electronics and can actively apply concepts from these areas, however, the disconnect lies in the fact that most of the candidates halt their exploration at theoretical concepts and do not build practical skills required for the roles.
• Lack of application: Most of the engineering students study their textbooks for giving exams and achieving a good academic score. The limited knowledge acquired through textbooks has concentrated the students to theoretical knowledge. Students must be motivated to think and innovate for themselves. They should be more focused on real-world applications and problem-solving rather than advanced theoretical learning. For example, digital signal processing has wide use in biometric-based applications. Fingerprint extraction used in mobile phones and other electronic devices uses image processing algorithms. Students can acquire some useful skills through tools such as PSpice, LabVIEW, OrCAD or get a certification in Robotics, or VLSI, and other such programs in order to validate their practical skills and build credibility.
• Skill deficit engineers: Many students lack knowledge of basic concepts. The absence of basic technical information, domain knowledge, in-depth understanding is a major roadblock which leads to a significant population being unfit for electronics centered roles. Curriculum shift, from conventional electronics to end-user-oriented design, is crucial. Students should actively increase their participation in practical labs such as Microprocessor and Microcontroller, Antenna & Microwave, Electronics Simulation, Communication, etc., which can help them harness their hands-on knowledge. For example, sampling, modulation/demodulation techniques learned in the Communication lab can prove to be useful if someone aspires to be a telecom engineer.

 

What are the career options available for an Electronics and Communication engineer these days?

At the end of the 6^th semester, there rolls in a wave of placement season. When it comes to placements, I found various options to go for PSUs, or join an MNC or go for higher studies in India or abroad. Here are some options that I found relevant:

1. Private sector:

   Globally renowned private companies also desire eligible candidates from Electronics domain. Apart from good cognitive skills, they require domain knowledge, i.e., theoretical as well as practical knowledge of subjects like Digital Electronics, Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, Electronic Devices & Circuits, and basic programming languages like C, C++, Java, etc. depending on the fitment requirements for the specific job roles. You can appear for various online assessments such as CoCubes^TM to understand your job fitment in the Indian markets and can get access to a variety of opportunities aligned with your profile and interest areas.

1.1 Core companies: If you are planning to get a job in core companies, you should be thorough with your core concepts and should keep yourself posted with the latest technologies/developments in this area. You can gear up your preparation from the pre-final year and doing some internships in your areas of interest will be helpful during interviews as this will help you gain practical exposure and experience.

i) Electronics sector: Some of the prominent core companies in Electronics segment include Synopsis, Siemens, Qualcomm, Cadence, Cisco Systems, Texas Instruments, Philips, etc. which recruit for roles such as Electronics Design & Development engineer, Network Planning engineers, System Control engineer, etc. These companies also offer internship opportunities which can act as a good preview to such roles. For instance, Samsung, LG Electronics, Videocon and Philips Electronics offer internships in Analog & Digital Electronics, Communication; Dell, Cisco Networking, and Wipro in Networking, etc.

ii) Communication/Telecommunication sector: A telecom engineer is responsible for planning, constructing and monitoring the maintenance of telecommunication networks in an organization. Other common profiles include Broadcast Technician, Communication Equipment operator, Data Architect, Signals Intelligence analyst, etc. Telecom companies like BSNL, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, etc. also actively hire in this domain and provide internship opportunities.

1.2 IT Companies: If you are good at Computer Fundamentals and coding logic, you can step into software companies like TCS, Wipro, IBM, Accenture, Cap Gemini, Tech Mahindra, etc. that actively recruit for the profiles like software engineers, developers, testers, etc. You do not need to be a born coder for cracking the interviews of software companies. A good hold on some of the key coding concepts and programming logic might prove to be helpful. Concepts such as if, if-else, operators, looping constructs, string operations, and basics of data structures, pseudocode, algorithms are some of the key areas covered during the recruitment processes for such roles.

2. Public Sector Units:

There are some highly reputed public sector units which provide career opportunities to the Electronics graduates. They are DRDO, BSNL, BHEL, CEL, ECIL, HPCL, NTPC, BEL, DMRC, BARC and many more. These accept candidates through GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) score. Some PSUs like ISRO, Indian Railways, conduct their own exams for recruitment. An ECE graduate can also join the Indian defence services (Indian Army, India Air Force, Indian Navy & Indian Coast Guard). Indian Engineering Services (IES) is one of the most prestigious exams conducted by UPSC to recruit in government sectors for executive hiring (grade-A & grade-B). These exams can be qualified by focusing more on subjects like Engineering Mathematics, Network Theory, Electronics Devices, Analog Circuits, Digital Circuits, Control Systems, Communication System and Electromagnetics.

3. Higher education:

B.Tech graduates in Electronics can pursue desired M.E/M.Tech course(s) in India after qualifying entrance tests such as GATE and some other college specific entrance exams. There are a variety of specialization areas that are available such as network management, digital media technology, microelectronic engineering, computer networks engineering, information electronics, communication electronics, automotive electronics, power electronics, robotics, radar & satellite communication, embedded systems, optics & optoelectronics, semiconductor materials and devices, VLSI Systems, etc. PG Diploma courses are also offered by CDAC for ECE engineers.

The students who want to study abroad can seek direct admission to various Post Graduate Diploma courses. For admission to most of these universities, they need to appear for Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)/ International English Language Testing System (IELTS). After this, candidates can choose their career paths; they can become research interns/associates at government or private organizations, professors, chief engineers, chief technical officers, etc.

Research organizations such as DRDO, HAL, ISRO, NASA, etc. also provide job opportunities to M.Tech graduates/ PhD holders in various research segments.

4. Alternative career paths:

Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Content development, Creative writing, research roles are also some prospective areas in which Electronics & Communication engineers can look forward to steering their career ships.

Sharing my journey on an alternative & less travelled career path:

I was inclined towards writing and found an excellent opportunity to utilize my domain knowledge and my passion to the best of my interests. I became a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Electronics domain at Aon Consulting and since then have been curating assessments for circuit branches and related areas. When I joined this organization, I was a complete novice in this job role. But gradually, I learnt the processes and scientific ways of creating assessments. My role is to create high-quality assessments and systematic execution of delivery processes to meet client requirements in the talent segment. Quality analysis, proofreading, deployment and testing of assessments, designing and creating marketable documentation of the new and existing assessment products, are some of the key responsibility areas of my job profile. I am now following my passion of writing and learning something new every day. It feels overwhelming that my work impacts careers of so many students and it is creating equal opportunity for various placement seekers.

Tools and certifications that will help build your career in Electronics and Communication industry

In addition to the domain knowledge, some tools and certifications that can help you in getting industry ready are:

• Tools used by Control System engineers:

MATLAB – It allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, creation of user interfaces, implementation of algorithms, and interfacing with programs in various languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, and Python.

LabVIEW – It is a graphics-based tool, i.e., it consists of various building blocks that we can drag around and connect in a data flow architecture. It is a highly versatile programming language that reflects changes in real-time and is suitable for real-world applications.

PLC/SCADA – Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is a hardware-based system used to control electromechanical processes. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a type of industrial control system that is used to monitor and control facilities and infrastructure in industries.

• Tools used by VLSI / Design engineers:

Multisim – VLSI Multisim™ is an industry-standard SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) simulation and circuit design software which is used for analog, digital, and power electronics in education and research.

Xilinx ISE (Integrated Synthesis Environment) – Xilinx offers a software tool by for the synthesis and analysis of HDL (Hardware Description Language) designs. It enables the developers to synthesize their designs, perform timing analysis, examine RTL diagrams, and configure the target programmer’s device.

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) – It is a category of software tools that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. It is also used for designing electronic systems such as Integrated Circuits (ICs) and Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs).

• Tools used by Embedded / Circuit Design engineers:

Eagle PCB – Autodesk EAGLE is an EDA software. It enables PCB designers to smoothly connect schematic diagrams, component placement, PCB routing, and all-inclusive library content.

PSpice – PSpice technology provides the high-performance circuit simulation to analyze and refine circuits, components, and parameters before transferring them to layout and fabrication.

Certifications/Courses:

Digital and Analog VLSI Design – This certification gives you a comprehensive insight on the design of integrated chips and VLSI/ASIC design

Networking Fundamentals & Concepts – Certifications such as Cisco (CCNA/CCNP/CCIE) are extremely popular, and employers get to know your proficiency in networking fundamentals and concepts. These are widely used as a selection/rejection criterion for various roles globally.

Embedded Systems – This course gives you a comprehensive knowledge of hardware and software design. Embedded system solutions within IoT (Internet of Things) will be a cornerstone for the next generation embedded system. 

Robotics – There is a constant increase in the interest of people in the field of robotics since that opens dozens of opportunities having plenty of room for innovation and automation. Human robots or humanoids have gained quite some popularity in India and around the world in recent times. Artificial intelligence combined with robotics is paving a new way for the technology to develop.

Action plan – Gearing up for your first job

Being an Electronics & Communication engineer, I can say that engineering is not a cakewalk. To make yourself industry-ready you must get out of your comfort zone and put some extra efforts to make yourself technologically sound. Thus, some key areas that can be built upon are:

• Focus on academics – in the classroom as well as practical labs.
• Focus on your internships – they are very important as they give you first-hand experience of working in the real world.
• Self-assessment is very crucial. Take a few assessments and reflect on your areas of strengths and weaknesses.
• Explore and research for your career options – ponder over your key focus areas, available job opportunities and align them with your interests to find the right job for yourself.
• Make sure all your accomplishments, interests, projects, certifications & extra-curricular activities are highlighted in your resume.
• Brush up your aptitude & communication skills, read newspapers to keep yourself a notch above in the Group Discussions (GDs) and Personal Interviews (PIs).
• Enjoy the ride! – Because you cannot give your best unless you enjoy it. Before your interview, revisit your achievements and success, be optimistic, confident and go for it.

Electronics and communication can thus be a lucrative domain when it comes to engineering. Hence, you must keep pace with the latest technologies and advancements globally in order to build a strong foothold. There is still a crucial milestone to be crossed in terms of quality for sustainable existence and India’s zealous engineers will rise to the challenges of the day and dedicate themselves to the building of strong India and shaping our country’s future.

Contributed By – Shagufta Khan

Assessment Team, Aon CoCubes

About the Author:

She has done B.Tech (Hons.) in Electronics and Communication Engineering from ABES Engineering College, Ghaziabad. Her key specialization areas include Signals and Systems, Digital Electronics, Analog Circuits and Communication systems. She is passionate about reading novels and loves to do volunteer work.