Over 1,500 jobs up for grabs at PSUs

13 PSUs to recruit from IITs GATE examination

Over 1500 jobs are up for grabs as 13 public sector companies are set to recruit candidates from the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (Gate) administered by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

The 13 companies among others include-- Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited; Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL); Power Grid; NTPC Limited; Gas Authority of India Limited and National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco).

While Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (Bhel) plans to fill around 500 vacancies--300 Mechanical, 150 electrical and 50 Electronics; HPCL plans to recruit 250 candidates for mechanical, civil, electrical, instrumentation and electronics & telecommunication engineering. NTPC will be recruiting 209 engineers in all through Gate.

Pay scale for these jobs, which range from graduate engineers to trainee engineer and management trainee, will be anywhere between Rs 7,00,000 and 10,00,000.

"In 2010, when aptitude test was introduce in Gate, we decided to short-list students appearing for Gate as it helps us outsource the examination process to Gate and concentrate on interviews and selecting students," said the HR head of one of the PSUs.

Last year around 7.5 lakh applicants registered for Gate and this year a 20% increase is expected in the numbers. Besides, with more colleges accepting Gate, the numbers are going to swell, say industry players.

"These companies, till the year 2009, had their own examination similar to Gate. In 2011 IOC decided to take candidates Gate score only on an experimental basis. Besides, for companies, the access to talent pool is much bigger," said Prudhvi Reddy, Course Director - Gate at Triumphant Institute of Management Education.

Reddy adds that increase in the number of candidates appearing for the examination has taken place due to the recession. So students felt that its not one kind of job that they should be looking at. They decided to broad base their job search. "Recession made people look for safer and stable jobs. Besides, with the sixth pay commission in place, the emoluments have become handsome," said Reddy.

Besides, Gate is one opportunity which open window to not only to thecorporate world but also to the academic one.

Gate, an all India examination that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of various undergraduate subjects in Engineering and Technology, is conducted jointly by the Indian Institute of Science and IITs.

Gate score is used for admissions to various post-graduate programmes (M.E., M.Tech, direct Ph.D.) in addition to being used by public sector units for employment screening purposes.