Campus Conversations AT PAFKIET Trains the Entrepreneurs Of Tomorrow

Rabiya Sulaiman Takes A Look..

Joining the PAF-KIET Session of Campus Conversations from the Industry were Akaasha Sultan Shaikh, Country Head of Applications South Asian Growth Economies at Oracle Corporation, Rasool Hoodbhoy, the Head of IT Operations at Habib Bank Limited, Aamir Ibrahim the Senior Director at Folio3 and Usman Zuberi, Senior Quality Assurance Engineer also at Folio 3.

This session of Campus Conversations themed on ‘Sync or Swim’, focused on whether students should try and synchronize with the current environment prevalent in the university or try to strike it out on their own and swim in a direction of their own choosing.

“Coming fresh from university, you need to synchronize yourself with the environment before swimming against the tide,” said Aamir Ibrahim. The biggest detriment that students have, which according to all the speakers was also the reason for their not getting a job as soon as they graduate was, as Rasool Hoodbhoy pointed out, the fact that they do not even try to keep up-to-date with all the latest technology innovations. At this point, Usman Zuberi also pointed out that “it does not take very long to browse one tech-focused blog or buy some print magazines and pursue it for ten minutes.” Added his colleague Aamir, that while the students “use technology to do assignments, they could also use it to keep up-to-date with all the latest news.”

The benefit of keeping up-to-date with all the latest trends in technology would be that it would help the students find out what is currently ‘in-vogue’ so that they could train themselves according to the market trends before actually going out to apply for a job. As Rasool Hoodbhoy put it, “Students need to become more practical. Most of them merely concentrate on research and development which is all very well, but there isn’t a lot of scope for R&D here in Pakistan, and students would be better off focusing on other, more practical, more applicable things.” The benefit of becoming more focused and practical would, in Usman Zuberi’s view be that “there is a huge demand for Pakistani developers in the global market and students should utilize their time at university to learn some technical stuff on your own. No formal training is actually needed to design or invent a project that is worthwhile or sells well,” he ended.

This led the discussion to how students could actually aim to become small-scale entrepreneurs on their own. Usman advised the students to take on small free-lance projects initially and then impress the clients with the quality of their work to get more work. Akaasha Sultan from Oracle added here that “Students should apply their studies, whatever they learn at university, from their course work, or university projects to real-life, free lance projects that they take up. Utilizing their university education in this way would help them to stand a better chance of successfully completing their work and impressing their clients.”

However, students cannot accomplish anything simply through ‘book-learning’. IT students in particular have to take extra courses to, as mentioned before, “keep up with the latest market trends.” In order to help students do this, Akaasha Sultan mentioned that “Oracle Academy Initiatives Programs try to groom students and make them better equipped to enter the IT industry.” Aamir Ibrahim had a more fun way that students could learn how to become better entrepreneurs and he suggested popular movies and documentaries like “the Social Network, Pirates of Microsoft or Silicon Valley that students could watch and learn how important it is to be an entrepreneur and how to start off your own successful business.” He also added that as part of their initiatives to help students, Folio3 was already offering internships to students from NED and other students were, naturally, welcome to apply.”

Usman Zuberi suggested that in their free time students could research on what formats some of the local Pakistani companies are working on, “C-sharp, web applications, iPhones etc. This will help you realize and apply for jobs at an organization which works on a script that the student is also good at and it will at the same time, give students ideas on what else they could learn to become more viable human resource!”

Rasool Hoodbhoy Sahib added that although such trainings and ‘extra work’ could not replace the importance of university learning, such courses were nevertheless a very important “supplement to university teachings and a very good idea.” As Akaasha Sahib advised the gathered students, their best approach to getting ready for the professional world was to “stay focused, choose a career path and then work towards becoming the best in it.”

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