The Alumni Association of Vasant Valley School partnered with Vasant Valley to conduct the first career fair in the month of August 2021. The fair entailed participation of various school alumni working in different fields across the globe. The erstwhile students of school spoke to the students of classes 11th and 12th about their experience with respect to their chosen fields and what to expect in that career path. The career fair conducted over two weekends of 7th and 8th of August and 11th and 14th of August ensured a comprehensive coverage of the common career paths chosen by students in the current times.
The broad categories covered on day one included business, economics and mathematics which saw representation from banking (Karan Prakash Nanda), accounting (Saniya Dinodia) and entrepreneurship (Shamit Grover and Samvid Gupta). They spoke about their journeys and the challenges that present themselves along the way. Students of school interacted with the various alumni during the session. The first day also saw ex-students in the field of design (Vanshikha Wadhwa and Mehr Chopra) talk about graphics and digital designing. Students from the field of sciences and in particular biology got a chance to interact with two past students and Headboys of school who are now practicing medicine in India and United Kingdom (Dr Digvijay Singh and Dr . Shivan Marya). Both of them shared their unique experiences of completing their graduation in medicine and going onto becoming super specialists in the field of ophthalmology and orthopaedics. Aspiring students were encouraged to work hard and smart with passion to achieve their goals of becoming doctors. Saraswati Nayar discussed the opportunities beyond clinical medicine in the field of research in biotechnology to conclude the day.
Day two of the career fair focussed on engineering and computer sciences with alumni in the fields of artificial intelligence (Kunal Datta), Data analytics (Shiv Mohan Dutt), Information technology consulting (Saloni Rai) and Engineering (Aabhas Sharma) spoke to the students about their very upcoming and relevant fields.
Discussions revolved around the growing opportunities in software and artificial intelligence and expanding information technology sector and big data analytics. Students who have chosen the fields of sciences, computer sciences and mathematics were a keen audience to these discussions.
Day three focussed on Law which has representation from many alumni. The session on choosing law as a career path had three students (Kaveri Gupta, Yaman Verma and Srinjoy Sarkar) talking about different facets of law ranging from corporate law to international law. Their talks were full of enthusiasm for the subject and each of them shared their unique gateway of getting into the legal field. The current school students had a healthy interaction and appreciated the guidance received.
The last day of the career fair focussed on liberal art which is the most popular type of career paths that current students of school choose. This broad category saw ex-students represent the fields of Journalism (Nayantara Rai), Policy making (Aaradhya Mehtta), environmental conservation and activism (Mallika Arya), academics and teaching (Shilpi Bhattachary and Pallavi Raghavan), literature (Vivan Marwah and Prayag Akbar) and psychology (Puroitree Mazumdar and Aishwarya Chawla). A houseful audience of current school students pursuing subjects of art and humanities attended the session and received guidance on these varied career options. The finer nuances and merits of each subcategory were discussed , as were the individual stories and perseverance needed to establish oneself in these fields. The students had a lively interaction with their seniors in this session.
The very successful career fair gave an opportunity for current students to interact with past students of school and get a bird’s eye view of each career path while being able to freely discuss their thoughts. For the first time, a program of this type has been conducted and despite the limitations of interacting over a virtual platform, it gave a new perspective to the aspiring students about their respective career choices.