It’s not only raining jobs at the IITs but also at regional colleges.
S M Gupta and his placement team at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Kurukshetra, Haryana, have created a record of sorts.
For the first time in over a decade, the institute had 115 companies on campus for placement. Till 2008, the company had been receiving only around 70 companies.
“Participation from companies this year will be good as the placement situation is better. We have already completed around 60 per cent of placement on campus. The process will be complete by April 2011,” said Gupta.
The institute has a total batch size of over 700 students including Bachelors and Masters. While Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have picked up students in single digits, Infosys Technologies, IBM, Tata Consultancy Services and Aricent will recruit 50 students each.
Down south, at the Vellore Institute of Technology University in Tamil Nadu, Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technologies, for the first time, offered jobs to a record 1,643 students this year.
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For Cognizant, this signifies its increased focus on the domestic market. In the third quarter ended September 30, 2010 (the company follows January-December calendar for financial reporting), of the total gross headcount addition almost 53 per cent were from campuses and 47 per cent were lateral.
India’s largest IT services firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), had hired the most last year at 803 students.
“This is a significant milestone in the history of the University. Now that Cognizant has made such high number of offers our campus placement season is off to a truly great start,” said VIT Chancellor G Viswanathan.
Similarly, TCS offered jobs to 1,091 students from Tamil Nadu-based SRM University. This, against 350 offers that TCS made to students last year.
“This is one of the highest ever placement for the university. TCS hired across verticals like B Tech, M Tech and MBA students,” said Prof S Ganapathy, Dean Placement, SRM University.
At the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur in Rajasthan, 350 students are placed against a batch size of 450 students. Here again, IT companies including Infosys Technologies and Accenture have indicated recruitment of 50 students each.
The rush to hire students from campuses validates that the business which was impacted during the slowdown is picking up fast. TCS after its second quarter results for financial year 2010 had announced that it will give offer letters to 30,000 student at campuses for fiscal 2011-12. This is 50 per cent more than what the firm had offered in the current fiscal.
During the current fiscal TCS had offered letters to 20,000 students across campuses. The company has begun campus visits since last month. “Initially when we stated our hiring numbers we had said we will hire 30,000 but that was predicted on the growth that we saw then. In the last one quarter growth has come much faster. For which we need to manage the capacity as well,” Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice President, Head Global Human Resources, TCS had told Business Standard.
Joining the bandwagon is India’s third largest IT services firm Bangalore-based Wipro which offered jobs to 406 students at SRM University. Last year Wipro offered jobs to about 300 students.
Similarly, Delhi-based HCL visited SRM University to pick up 235 students against 95 students that it picked up last year.
Along with the Indian IT services firm multinational firms like Intel, Google, Yahoo have also stepped up its hiring numbers. Intel hired 30 students from IIT-Madras. Whereas Oracle hired 33 engineering students from IIT-Kharagpur. Last year Oracle hired about 22 students from the same institute. “This year has been pretty good from placement perspective. IT firms like TCS, have confirmed participation in February-March 2011,” said a spokesperson from IIT-Kharagpur.
However, the salary difference between the regional engineering institutes and the premier institutes is stark.
For instance, Cognizant has hired students at an annual pay package of Rs 3 lakh from VIT University. While TCS would be paying an annual salary of Rs 3.19 lakh to B Tech students, M Tech students will get Rs 3.5 lakh and MBA students will get Rs 4.7 lakh per annum.
At IIT-Kharagpur however, social networking firm Facebook has offered a Rs 70 lakh annual package. At VIT University, Amazon would pay its only recruit an annual package of Rs 9.5 lakh.
Campus placement cells at engineering colleges are happy as the Indian IT services firm did not hire in such numbers in the last two years. And those who did hire, postponed the joining dates of students.
Most of the large IT services firm visit the campuses only during the eighth semester, in compliance with Nasscom’s guidelines.