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Journalism of Courage
With the placement season of engineering beginning from December 1, students, professors and experts are hopeful about a better and brighter placement season this year. Last year, many IITs went completely discreet with sharing the first phase data. This was believed to be a result of IITs and other engineering colleges registering a slower hiring market last year. However, experts are hopeful that things might change for the better in the 2024 placement season.
“The market was bad last year and we saw fewer offers across all institutes — private, government, big, small — but things have seemed to be taking a turn for good this year. This might be that companies are recovering from last year’s gap or that the market has been better this year. While there might be a few reasons behind this good change, I can surely see that things are looking better this year,” said Professor Balasubramanian Malayappan, Assistant Professor and Chief Placement officer at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani.
Last year, the decline was evident in the number of placed students. In the first phase, IIT Delhi claimed 1,050 offers were received, including pre-placement offers (PPOs), of which around 1,000 students were uniquely selected in the first phase. While IIT Delhi has reported a 10 per cent increase in the number of unique selections and PPOs a year before that, the institute failed to achieve that in the 2023 placement season.
Similarly, data accessed by indianexpress.com had shown that IIT Tirupati was able to get placements for only 83 students in the first session of the placement season, with the CTC ranging from Rs 6.5 lakh per annum to Rs 41.68 lakh per annum.
This was not limited to last year’s placement season. IITs also registered a decline in the offers coming from America-based tech giants such as Amazon, Meta, Twitter and Google in the 2022-23 placement season.
At IIT Madras, Amazon did not list themselves for the campus placement, and even though Google and Microsoft did come for recruitment, the number of offers was much less as compared to the 2021-22 season. Similarly at IIT Delhi, Amazon was invited and they did conduct the initial tests, but they finally did not turn up for the placement process. At IIT Roorkee, Amazon and Google had both given PPOs to students in the 2021-22 season, but gave it a miss in the 2022-23 season. At IIT Mandi, Google hired no candidate as against three in the 2021-22 season, but the tech giant hired eight interns.
Last year’s decline in placements, however, was defined as a domino effect of the Covid pandemic. This year, the effect seems to be over as more companies attending the placement season seems to be near the pre-pandemic levels. Several IIT officials have admitted that the number of companies participating in the placement season has seen an uptick this year.
Kala Venkata Uday, Associate Professor of IIT Mandi, shared with indianexpress.com that the “companies that were not present on the campus last year have also shown interest in this year’s placement season. The number of offers are also expected to increase this year, along with the remuneration.”
Even if the number of companies attending the placement season may not have seen a big jump this year at some IITs, the number of offers is expected to increase.
IIT placements are held in two phases – the first phase in December and the second phase between January and June. However, before the placement season begins, some students also manage to score Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs), which is increasingly becoming more popular among engineering students. Many engineering students take up summer internships during their course of study, be it as part of their curriculum or their own exploration. After successful completion of their internship period, some students are offered a full-time position by the company which changes their status from an intern to a permanent employee in that company. Gradual increase in the number of PPOs is also adding to the ease of recovery of placement seasons.
Adding to the positivity around placements this time, some professors also believe that the placement figures in media reports were misleading as they failed to show the number of students who opted for higher education.
“While the placements are expected to be better for Mechanical Engineering, more and more students are choosing to opt for higher studies rather than sitting for placements. Those students are not counted in the media reports, which gives an impression that the number of placed students has gone down instead of showing the reality that the number of students opting for higher studies has increased,” said Sajan Kapil, an Assistant Professor.
Prof Sajan Kapil is also encouraging students to opt for core jobs, rather than non-core related job offers. “I conducted a survey back in 2021, which showed that only 10 out of 120 students had opted for core jobs. I also noticed during that survey that the students who opted for core jobs were the ones who were a part of some student-led club. I came to the conclusion that such student-led clubs are a good way of motivating students to opt for core-related jobs, and I believe that IITs should encourage participation in such clubs,” he explained.
(This is a part of 5-part series on IIT placements by indianexpress.com. The first part explained why pre-placement offers (PPO) are gaining popularity, and the second part explained the IIT placement process. Third part talks about the forecast of the 2024-25 placement process. The fourth part is from the students’ perspective on how to prepare for placements, and the last part is about start-ups making their way back to IITs. You can find all IIT Placement related stories here)
