 "New IITs do better than last year")
The campus placement season at the young Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) might not be as dazzling as witnessed by their older peers, but it has been better than last year's placement, say the new IITs.
Most IITs have achieved 75 per cent placement and would complete the process by the end of this month or end-January 2016.
The new IITs began their campus placements in October. The number of companies visiting the campus this year has been relatively higher than last year, the IITs said. At IIT-Ropar, 25 companies have visited the campus till now against 32 last year. "We may get a higher number of companies this year as the campus hiring goes on till the end of January-February," said an official at the placement division of the institute.
Amazon, Microsoft, Paypal, Texas Instruments, Tata Motors, Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Axtria are among those who visited the IIT-Ropar campus this year.
Around 70 per cent students at IIT-Ropar have been offered jobs with the average salary higher than the last year's. The highest offer till now is Rs 28 lakh, the same as last year. "A lot of start-ups in software development visited us this year for the first time", said the official cited above.
S K Das, director, IIT-Ropar, said, "In terms of number of students placed, we have already touched last year's figures. The big companies scout for talent at the older IITs and we need to sensitise them. We need to connect to the senior officials in big companies on the long-term basis to encourage them to visit our campus. This year, we'll kick-start this exercise of liaisoning with large companies in advance. A little more exposure to the students to equip them with more confidence to face interviews is also planned by the institute to improve the selection of our alumni for better placement." At IIT-Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, 65 of 100 students who registered for campus interviews, have been placed. "Last year, we had a total of 18 companies; this year, we're not yet done with even the second round and already, 24 companies have visited us," said the official in-charge of placement cell at Mandi.
The major corporate players who evinced interest at Mandi were Microsoft, Mahindra & Mahindra, Flipkart, and eBay.
The students at Mandi are not very keen to opt for start-up outfits and prefer to explore the established options, the placement in-charge added.
Director Timothy A Gonsalves said he was working on creating synergies with the corporate sector by organising industry-academia conclaves. "We had organised a conclave in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry and many large corporate houses visited the campus. We try to engage them on research and development projects with our faculty. During the course of their visits, they get a glimpse of the academic values imparted here and there is an improvement in the number of companies for campus placement. We will work in this direction on sustainable basis to bring companies that can offer a fulfilling career path to our students."
At IIT-Patna, placements have been better than last year. K C Ray, placement in-charge at IIT-Patna, said, "Google and Texas Instrument have given good offers to our students. Recruitment by Texas Instrument is a good achievement for our electrical engineering department. We would complete placements by the end of this month or early January."
Average salaries across IITs have gone up. This year, the IITs have decided not to reveal salary packages.
