Campus Placements for country’s premium engineering institutes falls down for this 2016-17 academic year compare to last year placements records. One third of the IITians graduating this academic year either wasn’t found suitable for the job offer in campus placement or didn’t meet their expected job. The number of placement offers come down to 66%, even the number of companies at campuses is slightly up this year.
As reported by HT, data made available by IITs to the Ministry of human resource development (MHRD) shows the shrinking of employment opportunities for India’s large pool of engineering talent. Only 66% of those students; who have registered for campus recruitment landed a job offer in year 2016-17, as against 79% in year 2015-16 and 78% in year 2014-15.
Out of total 23 IIT’s only 17 have reported their placement data which revealed that only 6,013 students got jobs out of 9,104 who applied this year. There are around 75,000 students studying in 23 IITs in the country.
The human resource development ministry said that PSU’s recruitment through GATE scores has increased over these years and many of those recruited are from IITs. “These numbers won’t reflect in the campus recruitment numbers. We need to add these too before coming to conclusions on employment opportunities for IIT students. We, therefore, feel that the employment scene is not really going down for IITs.”
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Many companies in the manufacturing and construction sectors slashed jobs in November-January to protect their profit margins post-demonetisation.
Faced with economic challenges, engineering major Larsen & Toubro (L&T), for instance, has laid off 14,000 employees across businesses during April-September period this year, saying it was necessary to stay “agile and competitive”. “We have adopted various initiatives to be competitive. We have tried to introduce digitisation whenever necessary, so in case if we needed 10 people for a job we tried to bring it down to five,” company’s chief financial officer R Shankar Raman said.
A wave of protectionist steps by countries such as the United States, Singapore has further hit the services sector, especially IT companies. The Trump administration says more of the jobs performed by H1B visa carrying people could and should be filled by Americans.The top seven IT firms in India are reportedly planning for massive lay off.
Professor NP Padhy, dean of academic affairs, IIT Roorkee told HT about downfall in campus placements that, “There is an increase in the number of IITs but the jobs have remained the same. Naturally jobs have been distributed amongst all the IITs. At the same time, the new IITs were given an opportunity to start the placement drive much earlier than the rest to help them. Also, the number of start-ups that participated earlier has also come down. Many students also opt for higher studies”.
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The percentage of students who got a job offer after applying for placement has gone down at most IITs
IIT sources say that while the number of companies visiting IITs has increased in many cases, job offers have decreased. In IIT Madras, which topped the National Ranking (NIRF Rankings) of the country’s engineering institutes, 78% of students who were available for campus placements got the job offers, with an average salary of ~12.91 lakh per annum.
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That is to say that only 78% of the students who wanted jobs got the offers, as against 86 % in the previous two years. “Our placement drive was disrupted due to the cyclone this year and so there might have been a slight drop,” said Bhaskar Ramamurthy, IIT Madras director.
IIT Roorkee managed to place 653 of 974 campus job-seekers this year; that is 67% compared to 83% last year. Of the old IITs, only the one in Kanpur showed a slight improvement in campus placements this year.
In IIT Delhi, there are total 198 full time offers for the 267 students registered for the campus placements 2017. Officials of the institute, however, said that the data might see a slight increase as the placements are still on. “There are a number of students who opt for higher studies or sit for civil services examination. Many start their own start-ups and so not everyone opts for campus placement. At the same time, jobs are not increasing and we are a mere facilitator between the companies and the students. As far as we know, anyone from IIT Delhi looking for a job will be able to get one,” said a senior official of IIT Delhi.
Some IITs such as the one in Mumbai remain optimistic, claiming the beautiful recruitment season on and the numbers might still go up by the end of June. However, most companies visit IIT campuses for hiring from December to February and any additions after that are usually marginal.
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“At the same time, there are more IITs vying for the same number of jobs so that has also affected job placements. We are confident that things will improve next year. A number of companies have started giving pre-placement offers in the third year itself when students go for internships in companies, which is a positive thing,” said Professor Kaustubha Mohanty, convenor of All IITs Placement Committee.
The slide in campus placement of premier technical institutes reflects the possible impact of the economic downturn globally as also in India. India’s estimated economic growth has slowed to 7.1% in 2016-17 from 7.9% in the previous year. Newer IITs put Economic factors, rising automation and US visa issues are among the reasons recruiters across sectors such as information technology, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), banking, financial services and insurance have gone slow on recruitment.
Several macroeconomic factors are also coming to play in the final placements. The whole campus placement process seems to be slowed a bit this academic year. The numbers what had been planned, haven’t been able to reach. In certain cases, regular recruiters who had recruited three to four students last year have reduced their intake to one or two. Even e-commerce companies have reduced their offers.
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