Downturn: scramble for ISRO jobs

“The success of Chandrayaan has definitely helped. The general interest of science and engineering students in a career in space has increased. A whole generation of young minds witnessed the launch of Chandrayaan as a national event. It had an entire young lot completely charged up,” Nair told The Indian Express from Bangalore.

Nair said that since the applications remained to be screened,the quality of the aspirants for the posts was yet to be seen. “They would mostly comprise graduates,post-graduates and doctorates. They are still to go through the process of written examinations and interview,” the ISRO chief said.

The increased interest in a career at ISRO is of a piece with the trends in other government scientific institutions and top public-sector units in recent months — there is a clear revival of interest in public sector employment with people wanting to avoid the uncertainties in the private sector in the wake of the recession.

Nair revealed that ISRO had received a few applications from some foreign countries as well. “We are quite open to technically competent eligible people from abroad too. ISRO would like to be seen as offering one of the best career options for scientists and engineers working on space technologies,” he said.

Nair dismissed the failure of the European W2M satellite,a commercial launch carried out by ISRO last year,as an ‘accident’. “That is no reflection on the quality of our work and construction of the satellite. People recognise that such accidents do happen once in a while. I do not think the W2M failure has in any way hurt the image of ISRO,” he said.