With the placement season at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) across the country in its final stages and the shadow of the pandemic largely receding, faculty members said 2022-23 was overall better than last year. Students are being laid off, with some top tech firms staying away from campuses amid the slowdown in many developed economies. More core engineering students are being placed this time as compared to the last few years.
The campus placement season, which began in the first week of December in 23 IITs, is currently in its final stages with most of the students already placed, which will officially go on till June 30.
At both IIT-Madras, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Kanpur, the first generation of IITs, faculty members overseeing the recruitments said this year has been better than the last three pandemic years, despite the core engineering stream losing more. Offers are being made to the students. Recession.
According to Professor Sathyan Subbaiah, Advisor (Placement), IIT-Madras, a total of 1427 students were placed this season, as against 1238 in 2021-22 and 925 in 2020-21. While computer science engineering remained on top, other disciplines including electrical, mechanical and engineering design saw an increase in overall recruitment.
“The core industry is hiring more actively despite the slowdown. Start-ups from IIT Madras like Agnikul are becoming major recruiters. Also, high-frequency trading (HFT) firms have seen a significant increase in campus recruiters. International offers are also showing an increase in the trend,” said Prof. Subbaiah. Though it is the end of the season, still few companies are registered on the institute’s portal and it will roll out the same for possible placements.
Some of the companies visiting IIT campuses include Wells Fargo, Graviton, Plutus Research, Sprinklr, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Flipkart Internet Pvt Ltd, Zomato, Uber, Accenture Japan Ltd, Navi, Confluent, AQR Capital, Microsoft. , Google, American Express, Paytm, Warner Bros, VE Commercial Vehicles, BEL, Maruti Suzuki, Mercedes Benz, Royal Enfield, Tata Technologies, HCL, Infosys, TCS, L&T, Kotak, Deloitte, Cognizant, Texas Instruments, Bajaj Auto, Qualcomm , Procter & Gamble, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey & Company and Cohesity, etc.
Top IT companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Salesforce, which used to be the biggest campus recruiters, however, did not see many offers with some pre-placement offers (PPOs) like Microsoft. These tech giants laid off a large number of employees at the beginning of the year citing over-hiring and financial stress as the main reasons behind this.
“These companies largely stayed out of campuses this year, while PPOs were made by some of them before the season formally started. PPOs are made on the basis of an internship in the final year,” said a senior faculty member at one of the IITs, who did not wish to be named.
Placements began last December amid layoffs by major tech firms and fears of a global economic slowdown, with some relief that developing economies like India will not be affected in the same way. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Report titled ‘A Rocky Recovery 2023’, released this April, states that advanced economies are expected to see a particularly pronounced growth deceleration, from 2.7% in 2022 to 2.7% in 2023. up to 1.3%.
While IIT-Bombay did not share placement figures, it has already wrapped up the season with its commencement ceremony (to be held in place of the convocation). “This year was better than last year with the largest chunk of students being placed from core engineering streams,” said Subhasish Chowdhary, director, IIT-Bombay. Their number was maximum this time. A major reason for this could be the pandemic being behind us.
Higher student placement in core engineering is a significant trend this year, given that computer science and emerging technologies such as AI and robotics have remained the top choices for IIT entrants over the years, while core are keen to. The subjects were less in the engineering colleges of the country.
A student placement officer of the institute, who did not wish to be named, said that while the overall placement numbers have increased this year, top tech giants are not recruiting as much. “Some big firms made some PPOs, but they did not actively participate in campus hiring this season. Moreover, international companies came for recruitment with the highest package of Rs 3.67 crore being offered by one of them.
At IIT-Guwahati, faculty members said that the number of appointments has crossed 1000 for the first time. So far a total of 1070 students have been placed while the placement is still going on. This figure was 954 in 2021-22 and 734 in 2020-21.
Professor Lalit Pandey, Head, Center for Career Development, IIT-Guwahati said that the total number of offers is better than last year. “This year around 75% placed across all departments, indicating a good placement scenario across all disciplines. In general, students from circumscribed courses including computer science, electrical and electronics, robotics and AI, mathematics and computing, and data science get the most offers,” said Pandey.
The top five recruiters on the campus include Narayan, Oracle, Microsoft, NoBroker and Jio, he said. The highest offer this season was Rs 2.40 crore. In 2021-22 it was Rs 2.05 crore.
Second-generation IITs, including Jodhpur, Varanasi, and Mandi, also said they had more students placed across disciplines with a higher number of offers being made by start-ups.
“A total of 376 students have been placed for the 2023 passing out batch including B Tech, M Tech and MBA courses. In the last season, 314 students were placed while in 2020-21, 134 students were placed. Computer science/AI had the highest number of offers followed by electrical and mechanical engineering streams,” said Anuj Pal Kapoor, assistant professor and chairperson, Corporate Connect and Campus Placement, School of Management and Entrepreneurship (SME) at the institute.
The highest salary offered by a start-up to the 2023 passing out batch is 53 LPA (lakh per annum) followed by 51 LPA by a world renowned software firm. He said that last season it was 46 LPA while in 2020-21 it was 41 LPA.
Faculty members of IIT (BHU) Varanasi said that a total of 1087 students have passed out in various disciplines as compared to 1078 last year. The total number of international offers made was 46, which is a lot more than the previous season’s 32. Major disciplines including metallurgy, mining and pharmacy, mechanical, electrical and civil received the highest number of international offers. “This is a change from the past few years when computer science engineering students used to get most of the international offers,” said a senior faculty member of the institute.