Bangalore, Nov. 9 Even as recession-hit IT companies are going slow on their recruitment plans, placement officers at the country’s premier tech institutes are upbeat about this year’s hiring for their students.
Campus recruitment at the IITs are due to start in the first week of December and placement cells at IIT Chennai and Kharagpur do not foresee any change in the recruitment pattern this year. Prof B.K. Mathur, Professor-in-Charge, Training and Placement, IIT, Kharagpur, expects about 160 companies to participate in the recruitment process this year.
“These would be from IT, core engineering and even a couple of them from the financial sector. In fact, Barclays Bank has indicated that it would be present for the campus recruitment programme next month,” he says.
Lt Col Jaykumar, Head of Placements and Deputy Registrar, IIT, Chennai, says that “as of now, all the 200 companies that came last year have indicated that they would be present.”
“IITs are likely to have 30-40 per cent fewer number of companies this year,” says Mr Rishi Das, CEO, Campus Connect, a Bangalore-based organisation that helps build relationships between tech institutes and corporates, especially in the recruitment area. Average annual salary at IITs, which stood at Rs 5 lakh last year, is likely to dip to Rs 3.75 lakh this year, Mr Das feels.
There would be a dip in the number of job offers because companies are cutting down on jobs by at least 20-30 per cent.
“All students from premier institutes would get jobs but there would be fewer offers to choose from. The IITs and the Tier-I colleges would see a qualitative, rather than a quantitative change in the job offers.
“In terms of numbers, it would be the Tier-II and Tier- III colleges that would suffer because of the cumulative effect,” explains Mr Das. Companies that visited engineering colleges across all levels in the last few years would restrict themselves only to the better colleges this year.
Says an HR manager of a US-based IT product company, “We will only visit IIT-Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai this year and among the NITs restrict ourselves to the three or four best ones because we have only 20 offers to make this year compared with 35 last year.”
Biswaroop Padhi, centre director of IMS, Ahmedabad, said, “Many students who had already earned an MBA degree from various B-schools are working to crack Cat this year.”
Experts say the main reason for this phenomenon is the abundance of B-schools whose students fail to get proper placements every year. Padhi said, “A large number of B-schools have come up which churn out many MBAs every year. But due to various reasons like lack of a brand name of the institute and low quality of education, these students fail to get a lucrative job offers.”
Sameer Rai, regional director, PT Education, said, “Either students or graduates from second-rung B-schools, who did not get the right kind of opportunity, go for a degree from a better-known B-school, like the IIMs.”
Amit Agarwal, director, Time, who supported the aforementioned views, said, “The numbers of MBAs appearing for Cat is more in larger cities.” These students generally hope to get into one of the top-10 B-schools of the country by cracking the admission test.
Hardik Patel, one such student, said, “I would only go for a top-10 institute.”
Asked for the reason for taking such a step, he said, “Apart from the benefit of being with the best students and faculties, there is the advantage of getting the tag of a top MBA institute, which would be helpful in getting high-profile jobs from the very beginning. The pace of career growth is also much higher.”
Experts, however, do not favour such a move. Rai said, “Personally, I do not favour this course. Instead of going through the same course, it would be more helpful if students pursue a different line of specialisation. The combination of their MBA degree and the new specialisation would open new horizons.”
Cautioning students not to spend a fortune on fees and donations on lesser-known B-schools, Padhi said, “Before taking admission to a business school, students should evaluate the institute on various parameters.”
