LAHORE Hundreds of university graduates and final year students visited Government College University’s job fair organised at the varsity campus on Thursday. Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC) Chairman Prof Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin was the chief guest at the closing ceremony of the job fair organised by the GCU Career Guidance and Placement Centre under the guidance of Quality Enhancement Cell. The visitors explored employment and internship opportunities in reputed international and national organisations. As many as 53 noted organisations including banks, IT firms, NGOs, manufactures and ecommerce websites set up their stalls at the GCU Job Fair 2015 and offered more than 400 internship and permanent placement opportunities to the university’s students and graduates. According to the GCU spokesperson, an interesting incident occurred during the job fair when the participating multinational firms and banks excused from philosophy students for not having any placement or internship opportunities for them. The students argued with the recruitment managers “all theories of management, marketing and sciences are given by the philosophers.” They said that it was philosophy that made humans understand the fundamental nature of reality, knowledge, values and wisdom, and how could such reputed companies ignore the students studying wisdom? The stalls of e-commerce websites also remained the centre of attraction at the fair and students showed great interest in working for them as content writers, marketing managers and IT professionals. The students believed that e-commerce websites had bright future all across the world. A good number of private schools also participated in the job fair to recruit Ravians as teachers. Speaking on the occasion, Prof Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin said there was wide gap between the universities curriculum and modern market demands, adding such job fairs played a vital role in bridging this gap. He revealed he had got his first job in the United States from a job fair. He said universities should also more often hold trainings on resume writing and interview skills for their students. GCU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah said the academic environment and co-curricular activities at GCU also concentrated on overall grooming, confidence-building and personality development of students which was the reason that the reputed companies preferred their students. GCU Quality Enhancement Cell Director Ms Iram Sohail said students are reflection of their teachers and the institutions they attend. She said job fairs were a strategy to fast track the placement of students in reputed organisations. She said GCU didn’t charge any registration fee from any company and allocated huge fund from its budget for the professional career of their students. Talking to the media, GCU Placement Officer Mubashir Hassan said: “The activity stands fruitful if even only one student gets a good job opportunity from it.” However, he was hopeful that more than one hundred students would get permanent job placements from this year’s job fair. GCU Dean Faculty of Science and Technology Prof Dr Riaz Ahmed and Registrar Saboor Khan also visited stalls of all companies and discussed with the company executives their recruitment polices and criteria. Later, Prof Nizamuddin gave away certificates to the representatives of the companies participated in the job fair. Book fair at UVAS: A two-day annual book fair of University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) started at the varsity’s city campus here on Thursday. Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha inaugurated the book fair in which total 20 stalls have been set up by book sellers and publishers displaying variety of books, including livestock, literature, IT, social science, veterinary sciences, leather and fiber technology, statistics, computer sciences, environmental science and policy management etc. UVAS Librarian Muhammad Aslam said that books didn’t lose their significance even in the age of information and communication technologies. “Books in hard form leave everlasting impressions on the minds of readers”, he added. A large number of faculty member and students from various departments visited the book fair and showed interest. The book sellers sold their books with exclusive discount price to the students and faculty members of the UVAS. Vice-Chancellor Dr Pasha appreciated the efforts of organiser Librarian Muhammad Aslam, Prof Dr Asim Aslam, and all the library officials, faculty members and students.
