By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
Chennai/Tiruchirapalli : A “job fair” begun by Tamil Nadu’s Minister for School Education Thangam Thennarasu as a one-off event has now provided employment to around 95,000 people in just one and a half years.
The DMK may be the first party in the country to organise such job fairs that are now being conducted under the guidance of DMK MP Kanimozhi, daughter of Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi. The series is named after the chief minister’s honorific Kalaignar.
In the first fair held in Kariapatti in Virudhunagar district around 3,100 job aspirants and 50 corporates participated and 1,196 jobs were offered.
The seventh fair held this February in Tiruchirapalli — around 330 km from here — saw the number of job aspirants and participating corporates up to around 72,000 and 500 respectively. Around 36,000 candidates were given job offers.
Corporate human resource executives are happy with the job fairs for many reasons. Companies like Nokia India, Hyundai Motor, Foxconn, Ajuba Solutions and several others particiapte in the job fairs regularly.
First, we are able to get a wide variety of candidates to choose from, which is not possible in other private fairs which would cost us around Rs.100,000. In addition we also save on recruitment advertisements,” an official of Hyundai Motor India Ltd told IANS.
The company has hired around 200 candidates in the Tiruchirapalli job fair.
It is a win-win situation. Thanks to the mobilising skills of the DMK party cadres the corporates get a large pool of talent to select from at zero cost. The rural youngsters are able to get into the corporate sector after getting trained in soft skills which the fair organisers provide days before the fair.
Kanimozhi told IANS: “We did not start this event to gain political mileage. It was started to showcase talent available in rural places to the corporates and also provide an opportunity to the rural youth. We have not created a database of those who have got jobs out of these job fairs. So there is no question of our party cadres going to the candidates for votes citing the job fair. However we will be glad if these job fairs create a goodwill in favour of DMK.”
She said the party was working on a programme to provide soft skill training to the rural youth. “We will start in a couple of months. We will be setting up job information centres in every district where job seekers come and find oppourtunities. We have set up such information centres in Cuddalore and Tiruchirapalli.”
The party not only mobilises job aspirants but also foots the entire bill for each three-day event.
Thanks to the NGO Vazhikatti the job fairs are held in a structured format in three phases.
The first phase involves district-level leaders and cadres of DMK going to the villages and sounding out the youth and their families about holding a job fair.
On the appointed date the job aspirants have to register their candidature and, based on their educational qualification, they are classified into three categories – degree holders; ITI and diploma holders; and unskilled and educated between Classes 8 and 12.
Some firms were initially worried about angering opposition party AIADMK if they took part in the job fairs.
“Initially we were a little hesitant when the invitation came to us to participate in the job fair. However a firm assurance was given that the fairs will be apolitical. Now we are happy,” M. Manivannan, Manager (Resourcing) of Nokia India, told IANS.
The company has already hired 1,200 candidates through the job fairs.
According to the corporates, though the fairs are organised by the DMK functionaries, there are no party flags at the event venue and the event is done in a professional and apolitical manner.
(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at [email protected] )