Commander Gurumoorthy Gangadharan (Retd) is the Associate Dean - Career Services and External Relations and Head of GCGC at GITAM, Visakhapatnam. A gold medalist from IIT Madras and an alum of IIM Indore, Commander Gurumoorthy is a retired Naval officer whose endeavour is to groom young minds during their formative years and to guide them on the right path. 

He has received four commendations during his military career, including an "On-the-Spot Commendation” in the Tri-Services Command. He has completed his Master's degree in Defence Studies from Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, and his M.Tech. in Maintenance Engineering and Management from IIT Madras.

GITAM Visakhapatnam

Can you throw some light upon what GCGC is at GITAM and how it helps students in their career journeys?

Campus placements are a common and essential factor at all schools. The team at GCGC – GITAM Career Guidance Centre has come to realise that students in today's world require significant support and guidance to face the plethora of options and choose the right one. The final year of any student's course is too late for them to identify their career path. GCGC was founded to move away from the traditional focus on pure campus placements, and to instead identify and guide the career aspirations of the student through its faculty-turned-mentors.

Could you explain how GCGC provides support to students who join GITAM?

GCGC is built on three important pillars: Career Counselling & Mentoring, Competence Development & Career Fulfillment.

Career Counselling & Mentoring: We realize that students need somebody to guide them as a mentor. The GCGC initiative aspires to ensure that every student be achieves their career aspirations with the help of a faculty mentor. We are coaching the faculty to become mentors because it's not only about how you drive them towards their career goals but also about how you build them up as individuals. 

The faculty’s goal is to understand the students and then talk to, guide and motivate them. The faculty interact with the students, get to know their interests, and then direct them towards the multifarious career options present. Additionally, we create a personality profile of each student to help them, and us, understand their strengths and abilities better.

GITAM is a very big university with a large community of students. How do you make sure that the services offered by GCGC are accessible and reach each and every student?

We have Career Guidance Centre at every campus, and the GITAM career guidance center takes care of the entire university. While we have access to the students, not many go through, or respond to the information we share. Hence, if there's an initiative that needs to reach the students, it goes through the mentors, who have a greater level of connect with a concentrated group of students.

We also use student interns, and ensure that the students are well-connected.

Does GCGC make changes and improvements, taking into consideration the feedback from students according to their requirements?

GCGC started in 2020, and we have been growing steadily ever since. Every piece of feedback that comes our way is taken into consideration and added to our systems after review. Our operations aren’t rigid, and we always thrive on making improvements. We regularly utilize the feedback received to strengthen the system. Similarly, with regards to career counselling and mentoring, we take regular feedback from the students and from the mentors every semester. Changes are implemented immediately, as soon as the following semester. Feedback from our External (Corporate & HEIs) & Internal stakeholders (Students & their parents) play a major role in sculpting our processes.

It is very important to maintain a good relationship with external stakeholders in order to map the students’ interests with the opportunities available. How is GCGC focusing on that part?

When connecting with the industry or other external stakeholders, it is important for us to understand our students' potential and present the right candidate for the right opportunity. The students go through career counselling, which prepares them for the career options they can choose.Secondly, higher education institutes play an important role in imparting knowledge and experiences. Our students and faculty go to the partnered institutions, absorb the best practices, and bring them back to our institution.

We also focus on alumni connections. Over 60,000 of our alumni are spread across the globe. We have a separate division called the Directorate of Alumni Affairs that is in touch with our alumni. Various alumni initiatives have been implemented by the directorate as well.

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How does GCGC build student skills necessary for their career growth?

GCGC's functioning process is one that has been fine-tuned over several years, and batches of students. 

Firstly, we study the market and understand the requirements of the concerned industries, and work on obtaining requisite resources for the students. Secondly, if students have displayed proficiency in a particular skill, we match them with suitable companies for more experience and opportunities. Companies, especially product companies and those into high-end processes, prefer specific skills and don't find it necessary to look at thousands of student profiles. Competence Development aims to nurture niche skills for each of the profile. We make use of LinkedIn Talent Insights to keep ourselves abreast of the developments in the industry. Thirdly, we also provide guidance, resources and motivation to students interested in higher education. Ex: Region specific Higher Education Fairs: Ireland, Europe, Australian & Global Higher Education Fairs wherein students interact with the Consulate/ Embassy reps, University Leaders & Heads of Institutes and make informed decisions regarding their Higher Studies. Ex: One of our BBA student has secured admission in London School of Economics for Masters in Data Analytics.

Could you provide a few highlights and initiatives implemented by GCGC for the students?

The GYLP– GITAM Young Leaders Program, is a new program initiated to identify top students and impart leadership qualities outside the classroom. Eligible students are identified and taken to renowned industries and central government agencies such as Vizag Steel, Indian Navy, and the leadership team at Kia Motors, Bengaluru.

Another initiative – G-Explore – is an in-house platform aimed at making available the plethora of opportunities available across the country. Through the platform, the GCGC team explores right opportunities for students, which might otherwise not be available to a majority of the students, and pushes them out on the platform.

How does GCGC focus of leveraging internship opportunities for the students during their course period?

Through tie-ups with various organisations that focus on internships, such as Internshala and AICTE, we provide opportunities that are accessible to students on the G-Explore platform. This helps them identify interest by the time they reach their final year of study.

Additionally, AICTE has mandated the need for atleast one internship experience for engineering students. We enrol students into the aforementioned platforms, and let them choose jobs or internships that matches their interest(s).

Glad to share that GITAM Bengaluru has come on top in the recent Internship Cohort launched the AICTE through EduSkills Initiative.