Mind mapping - A design tool

Challenge -    Being a member of the Training and Placement (TnP) community in my institute, my/our  challenge is to improve the standard of the placements (i.e. job offers) presented in the college  campus. The scope of this work includes understanding the trends in the company's job  offerings, salary terms and the kind of knowledge base expected from students enrolled in  courses offered specifically in our institute. It also involves acknowledging the changes in  student's interests in various fields over a period of years and the job prospects associated with  it. The project team consists of 15 members of TnP and 3 faculty members at an authoritative  position. We will focus on trying to unravel what students (as consumers) desire to accomplish  after graduating and what companies (as suppliers) expect from their employees and how these  two can be properly paired up just like jigsaw puzzles to present a win-win situation.      Selection -    During this course, as I came across the mind mapping tool, I instantly realised this to be an  opportunity to enhance the placement procedures in our college. As I introduced this to my  fellow teammates, we decided to try this design tool. Broadly speaking, mind mapping helps to  organize the huge accumulated data by observing several patterns or sequences so that it can  be arranged in clusters.       Application -    To implement this design tool, mind mapping, we first had to collect the data. For this purpose, a  questionnaire was created which incorporated questions concerning the student's field of  interest, courses covered in the institute regarding that field, whether that knowledge base is  enough to acquire a job in that field, companies they are interested in, job profile they desire,  etc. Another dataset was created involving the companies that have been participating in our  on-campus placements program, the job profile that they have been offering and the sectors  they are associated with (manufacturing, IT, business, etc.)    The two datasets are then brought together for creation of mind map. This mind map helped in  charting the convergence of company's offers and student's demands. It assisted to outline the  fields still in trend, the companies commonly aspired to by students, job profiles that the needs  to be consistently offered and any progress in particular sectors. The outliers were considered  the new ventures to be explored leading to new companies to be invited in the placement  program in upcoming years.

Insight -    When the results of this mind map was presented in front of the authorities, it was clear that  everybody had a much better understanding of what shifts need to be made in coming batches  to inculcate the knowledge students required to achieve their dream jobs, eventually attracting  more companies and enhancing the program and status quo of the institute.     If this mind mapping tool is used every year in the TnP community, then it will be a huge help in  making satisfactory owners and employees every year, keeping up with the evolving pace of  industry.       Approach -    Given that this tool has been beneficial in organizing the information, this data can be further  improved by collecting the feedback of alumni currently working in companies covering aspects  of job satisfaction such as privileges, insurances, promotions, etc. This will diversify the key  thoughts expanding the clusters for better mapping.

