Placement season big surprise, beyond expectation for IITs

Looking at the sluggish economic situation, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were expecting below average placement season. Besides, the placement season may be much better than they were expecting it would be. IITs say, they were expecting placement a low affair this year, but the response from companies has been quite good.

The response is quite good and beyond their expectations. Placement cell recorded an increase of 10%-20% in average salary offered. Besides, the highest salary offered has notices jump of around 20-90% as compared to last year. Final placement season in the IITs will commence from 1st December, 2013.

A placement official from IIT Bombay said, “Given the slowdown, we wondered if the placements would be as decent as last year but a good number of companies have confirmed participation allaying our fears.”

In this season, a US-based software major has offered the highest salary of Rs. 1.30 crore per annum to a IIT Bombay student. Besides, an institute official informed that this cannot be confirmed yet as the final placement has not taken place. Last year, Samsung offered the highest salary at Rs. 80 lakh per annum.

IIT Bombay will see 1,600 students will take part in placement session. As many as 250 to 270 companies will participate in this placement session. The placement official further added, “Some US companies have doubled the salaries this year against what was offered last year.” IIT Bombay said this year many software companies showed interest to participate in the placement session. Companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, LinkedIn, Facebook, Goldman Sach, Shell and Samsung are few which have confirmed their participation so far.

Even IIT Kanpur and Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) are expecting higher salaries this year as compared to last year’s salaries. The institutes also informed that IT biggies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will be participating in the placement session next month.

Sudhir Barai, head-training and placement at IIT-KGP said, “There is misleading speculation that none of the US companies are coming to IITs for placements. This is not true. Some of these giants have taken care of their requirements through pre-placement offers (PPOs) which is why they are not coming. However, major IT, consulting, finance and core engineering companies like ITC, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have confirmed their participation in the placements at IIT-KGP this year.”

For IIT KGP, feedbacks from recruiters have been very good. Barai, said, “Last year 180 companies participated in the placement session, but this year 220 companies confirmed their participation which is more than last year. The feedbacks from recruiters have been very good and salaries will be higher than last year.” This year the batch size of the present batch is 2000.

Seconding Baria is Vimal Kumar, chairman-training and placement at IIT-Kanpur who said that global firms such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft will be visiting campus for recruitment. Kumar, said, “Some companies have dropped out after confirming but it is not alarming. This happens every year. However, salaries will be higher or at least like last year.” IIT Kanpur has confirmed participation of over 200 companies for the batch size of more than 1000 students. Other companies likely to participate at IIT Kanpur placement include Oracle, Mitsubishi, Diamond Consulting, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs are some big names.