Bengaluru, Feb 26

Thousands of job seekers made a beeline to the ‘Yuva Samruddhi Sammelana’ job fair held at Bengaluru Palace Grounds organised by Karnataka Skill Development Corporation on Monday.  Over 600 companies including Amazon, Bosch, L&T, Toyota, Schindler and others took part in the fair.

The fair has more than 1.10L job openings for which 75,000 job seekers registered online. Thousands more registered offline too. College students, graduates, post-graduates and middle-aged men and women from across State attended the fair seeking better jobs opportunities. However, the candidates were only allowed to a maximum of six companies.

The hopeful candidates were disappointed as they expected on-spot interviews but the companies just collected their resumes and promised to call them back.   Kiran, an engineering graduate, who had travelled from Karwar, said, “We have spent so much money and hard work on the course. We do not expect a great package but at least a good job can help me and my family.”

Large number of aspirants applied for jobs at MNCs. However, new companies witnessed a dearth of candidates. Nidhi, an MBA graduate, told Salar News, “There are a lot of opportunities for MBA graduates but tons of resumes are being handed over to the companies. They are telling us we will call back but to how many people can they call back.”

An newly opened automotive company said they had openings for 10 positions but only four people had applied for them. “We expected more registration since this is an event for 1 lakh job seekers,” Imperial Tobacco Company (ITC) representative said.

Skill Development Minister Sharan Prakash Patil said that every year in Karnataka, about 9.3 lakh pre-university (PU) students, 62,437 students from Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), 48,153 students from polytechnic institutes and roughly 4,80,000 students from other colleges pass out. However, he said the unemployment rate is at 2.4 per cent as per Periodic Labor Force Survey Q3-2024.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah inaugurated the fair. He targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over unemployment in the country. “Modi won the elections with votes of students and youth. If Modi has acted on his promise of creating 2 crore jobs annually in 2014, the country should have created 20 crore jobs in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, even existing jobs are lost and unemployment rate has mounted to a record 8.40 per cent,’’ he said.

He promised to ensure that skill-based job training and more Udyog Melas will be organised and even district level job fairs will be held.  He said his government has delivered on its promise of unemployment allowance under Yuva Nidhi Guarantee.

Speaking about the Yuva Nidhi guarantee for unemployed youth, Minister for Skills Development Sharanaprakash Patil said, “Yuva Nidhi has received response from 1.4 lakh unemployed graduates and diploma holders.”