Dr. Veerabhadra Reddy Basam is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at G. Pulla Reddy Engineering College (A), Kurnool. He has 23+ years of experience in teaching and research and two years in the industry. He has published 35 research papers in national and international journals and filed two patents. He is a member of the Indian Society for Technical Education, and the Society for Sciences and Combustion Institute (India). He has been serving as a member of Governing Council, Academic Council and Board of Studies at G.Pulla Reddy Engineering College.

Dr. Basam has been heading the Training and Placement department at G. Pulla Reddy Engineering College since 2007. Apart from involving himself in the teaching and learning process, research and consultancy, Dr. Reddy is actively working on the training and development of students to make them employable. He has played an important role in helping thousands of students get internship and placement opportunities in multiple diverse companies over the years. Dr. Reddy is also an active member of a few non-profit organisations that are into community / social service.

G Pulla Reddy Engineering College

How long have you been with GPR Engineering College and how is the experience with GPR Engineering College?

I have completed 23 years in the industry. I have worked on two major responsibilities, one as a teacher and the second as the Training and Placements Officer. For seven years, from 2000 to 2007, I was involved in teaching alone in the Mechanical Engineering, Industrial and Production Engineering departments. Thereafter, I took over placements in the year 2007. Since then, it has been about 16 years since I started heading and working in this department.

What are your roles and responsibilities?

I teach subjects in the mechanical engineering department and I teach thermal engineering. I teach mostly the students in their second and third years. My primary responsibilities are helping the students get placement opportunities and meeting and interacting with the students of all the branches from all the 4 years at different stages. I do this by creating awareness among all the students about career opportunities and how to go about chasing their career goals. I figure out what learning resources they can get from the college in general and the Training and Placements department in particular. It is also my responsibility to arrange lectures with guests from the industry and alumni. I also take part in the training of students through essential skills for placements.

How much of a team do you have in the placement team and how they are working?

The placement cell has a core team and an extended team. In the core team, we have one manager for corporate relations whose primary responsibility is to go out, meet the companies, and discuss with them possible ways to share knowledge and collaborate. It's a role where they concentrate purely on maintaining relationships with recruiters. There is one faculty for executing the training programs, from the first year to the final year, we have one clerical assistant responsible for maintaining the student database. They will also take care of student registrations, send communication to the students, and maintain record. In the extended team, we have one one or two faculty members, depending on the size of the department. If the stream has more number of students per batch, there will be two faculty coordinators. Otherwise, there will be one faculty coordinator from each of the departments who will help us. There will also be one senior faculty member from each Engineering department who will be in charge of Placements. All of us together are under one banner and work together as a team collaborating for achieving one common goal.

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Name companies, till now, GPR Engineering College has brought?

We get an average of 40 to 50 companies that visit us every year. This includes both IT companies and other companies, including core companies, but the majority of our recruiters are from the IT industry. That is where most of the employment opportunities are. We also have long-term associations with companies like Cognizant, TCS, Infosys, Accenture, LTIMindtree, IBM, Value Labs and more. These are some of the companies that do visit our college on a regular basis, depending on their requirements. We also have engineering services companies like Hyundai Motors, Medha Servo Drives and Toshiba that hire our students.

What are the different training programs you offer to the students?

We have a structured training program in place that is very comprehensive. We start this program in the first year itself, where we focus on giving our students the exposure. This will help them during the final year, when they sit for placements. We help build their communication and language proficiency skills and motivate them to take part in extracurricular activities. This is something that is not commonly available in Intermediate colleges because the focus there is only on academics. We try to expose our students to activities like sports and games besides academics. We have cultural and literary activities, along with paper presentations. In the first and second years, we provide training from basic to advanced communication skills. The classes are run through workshops where, more than teaching, we make sure the students are learning and practising. Most of our classes are more student-centric and they are involved in some activities, while the teachers play the role of mentors. We also offer training in quantitative reasoning, logical reasoning and coding, in addition to algorithms and problem-solving. They can apply these skills to coding, competitive examinations and more. Students can also pick which programming language to learn from Java, Python or C, which they can learn through work benches.

What are the highest packages that students have received?

The highest package our students were offered are from Flipkart. The CTC is INR 32.5 lakh per Annum. There are some other companies like Wells Fargo, which has offered around INR 15 to 16 lakhs per Annum. We also have DBS Bank offering INR 10 to INR 11 lakhs per Annum CTCs. Cienna, on the other hand, has offered INR 14 lakhs per Annum. There are some companies which offered CTCs in the INR 10 to 15 Lakhs range, but their number is limited. There is scope to improve this number. Every year, more than a hundred students get high-paying jobs in the range of INR 5 to 15 lakhs per annum. The average package is around INR 4.9 Lakhs. Here, we have to make a note of the fact that we have almost 40 to 50% of the students who come from the core branches. So the packages will differ accordingly.