Marred by global layoffs and over-hiring, major tech companies are being ‘selective’ in recruiting fresh talent this season, which is reflected in the first phase of ongoing placements at the Indian Institutes of Technology across the country.
Faculty members say many companies are either staying off the campus or making very few offers. Older IITs like Bombay, Kanpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee said while pay packages being offered are more or less the same, the number of overall recruitments, in particular by the Information Technology (IT) sector companies, has been slightly low. The first phase started on December 1 and will go on till December 15.
“On the first day of placements, we had 46 companies interviewing candidates either online or in-person. Of the 250 job offers on Day 1, more than 175 were accepted. Besides, 300 pre-placement offers (PPO) were received of which 194 were accepted. While salary packages have remained largely unchanged, tech giants have either been very selective or have not visited the campus this year,” said an IIT-Bombay spokesperson.
Some companies that have recruited are Accenture Solutions, Airbus India, Microsoft India, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Procter & Gamble, Qualcomm, Shell India, Texas Instruments and Tata Steel, among others, the spokesperson added.
“Placements are going on well but not as good as past few years. Some of the IT companies cancelled at the last moment while there were some that registered and took the initial test, but backed out last minute or hired very few. International offers were even lesser. It is mostly the start-ups that made good offers,” a professor at IIT-Kanpur said, who did not wish to be named.
Final year students at IIT-Roorkee received 500 offers (some of the results are still awaited) by a total of 63 companies in two days of placements till 2pm on Friday, of which six were international offers.
“Overall the placements have been fine, but of course there is an impact of the global economic situation in the IT sector. The market is volatile. The overall recruitment numbers have reduced than past few years even as there has been diversification of profiles. Many of the big tech companies have not turned up or remained too selective in their approach. They are just being cautious given the scenario, but students are ready to face the challenges,” said Kaushik Pal, professor in-Charge (placements), IIT-Roorkee.
The highest offer bagged was of Rs 1.3 crore made by a domestic company while about Rs 1 crore offer was made by international companies, said Pal.
Despite the slight dip in international offers, IIT-Madras and IIT-Guwahati saw a jump in the number of offers made by domestic companies, with the latter bagging the highest international offer of Rs 2.04 crore on day one of the placements by two students while highest domestic offers was of Rs 1.1 crore.
At Guwahati, the big recruiters of this year’s first two sessions include Microsoft, Google, Uber, Qualcomm, Enphase Energy, Oracle, Nutanix, Thoughtspot MTS-2, Texas Instruments, American Express and JP Morgan.
“Initially, the big giants, for instance, Microsoft said they would not participate in the placement sessions as many of these had already given PPOs but it was only last week that they registered. International offers were slightly fewer than last year yet the pay package offered was highest so far this season. Most of the offers this time were national,” said Abhishek Kumar, head, centre for career placements at IIT-Guwahati.
Santosh Gudlavalleti, a final-year electrical engineering student at IIT-Madras who coordinates non-core placements at the institute, said there were recession fears among companies that made them slightly hesitant of hiring but the overall placement scenario was decent. The international offers went up to around Rs 1.8 crore while the highest domestic offer made is of Rs 1.6 crore.
“There were a few companies, for instance Zomato, which gave PPOs but didn’t turn up for the placement sessions. Still a number of other companies including those based in Europe, US and Japan came in such as Maverick, Da Vinci, Microsoft and Google among others,” he said.
Most institutes said Amazon, which saw massive layoffs this year, did not come for placements this season. The second-generation IITs, whose placements cycle is not in sync with the older IITs, maintain that they will be able to share data only after a week or so of the placements.
“We can share precise numbers only around December 12-13. But with the current job offers, we have seen an increase in all the parameters, namely number of offers, pay packages, PPOs etc. Due to recession, we have observed less participation from the start-ups particularly,” said prof Tushar Jain, faculty advisor, career and placement cell, IIT-Mandi.
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