Question

How do I get a good job if I belong to a tier-3 college in India ?

Answer 1

1. Work Smart and Hard

People put a lot of effort in making projects but they don’t represent it well on their resume. Some people work on 2-3 months long self-initiated projects, but they just mention the technologies they used within a line.

2. Lead your own journey & Discover your own path to success

Always remember, "To be a self-initiator and a self-motivator is good". People usually follow the conventional ways to get a job like: Practice programming 1-2 months before interviews, but unlike campus placements, for off-campus placements it’s never sure that when a person will get shortlisted for interviews. So always keep yourself involved in something or the other.

3. Make your presence online

Answering questions over Quora, Stack-overflow and other platforms may help in many ways like synchronization with the latest trends and coming across new challenges. Compete on various coding platforms. Make your projects open source and do open source contributions.

4. Internships might land up in getting a pre-placement offer. Long term internships give a real-world work experience.

5. Do good projects

Tier-3 candidates usually do a single Web/Mobile based project, but on the contrast Tier-1 candidates have multiple projects based on ML, CN and other core computer science fundamentals.

6. Do online courses and certifications

Use of cloud has heavily increased over time in industries and having knowledge of it is a big plus.

7. Attend relevant workshops and sessions also join or create communities.

Answer 2

Yes! There are ways to succeed in life depending on your skills. People from tier 1/tier 2 colleges do have an advantage over you as a lot of good companies come for placements,they would have more exposure to various organisations and so on. You are still young and the tables can turn in your favour anytime provided you work hard for it and develop your skillsets.

Be the jack of all trades, keep learning new things as often as possible. Never ever waste your vacation holidays. Apply for internships and do online courses which add value to your resume. Work on projects by your own. Don't give it to some project center. Do as many projects as you can, because you should make your work speak for you. Yes, by the time you graduate from a tier 3 college you might not be provided with as many opportunities as people from other colleges but that doesn't stop you from achieving greater heights. Personally I would suggest you to do the following:

During college:

Please maintain a good CGPA. Many people would say that it's not very important, it's just an eligibility criteria. There are people who missed their dream companies because they didn't have 0.1 or 0.2 in their CGPA. Maintain atleast 70% throughout your academics. Not 69.99% but 70.00%.

To improve skills:

Whichever branch of engineering you are from, learn atleast one coding language. This will be very useful.

Do atleast two or three minor projects on your own. Also do study projects, that is you either create an idea of your own or improvise someone else's idea which already exists. Publish papers, attend paper presentations in symposiums (a great way of getting rid of stage fear and also if you win,you get some cash/gift) you can also checkout the various topics in the presentations some of them would be eye openers.

Do atleast one or two online courses which is in your field of interest. Apply for internships, seminars, workshops in any topic you are interested in.

Learn aptitude and have a good command over English.

To prepare for placements:

Apply for hackathons,ideathons and so on..they would provide internships/ job offers if you win those.

I would again suggest you to apply for internships.Not those classroom type ones but actual intern work types. Some companies offer pre-placement offer. You could be one of those lucky ones!

Register yourself on all the job portals, update your resume, apply for companies. Please build a very good resume and make sure that “ your work speaks for you”.

If you are trying for off campus jobs, try to find a referral. It would be easier to get an interview. Check the careers page on the company's website. Hope this helps. Thanks for the A2A.

Cheers :)