IIT placements see uptick in marquee firms, international offers

The first phase of placement season at IITs, has attracted significantly higher number of recruiters compared to last year

From marquee first time recruiters like Jaguar Land Rover, Alphonso Inc., and Ather Energy to international offers in USD, country's premier engineering colleges; the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs); are witnessing an uptick in placement offers this season. The first phase of placement season at IITs, scheduled to start from 1 December, has attracted significantly higher number of recruiters compared to last year.

At IIT Madras, for example, 326 companies have expressed interest to participate in the first phase of the placement process for BE students this year for 490 job profiles, as against 270 firms last year. Preparations for phase two of the placements will begin in second half of January. At IIT Madras, more than 1,300 students have registered for placements across different study streams and departments this year.

Similarly, at IIT Guwahati, number of profiles registered in the first phase this year stands at over 250, "quite higher than last year", as per Atanu Banerjee, faculty coordinator for placement, Centre for Career Development, though last year details were unavailable.

International offers in US dollars led by the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple, Goldman Sachs and Amazon, among others are also expected to rise. However, IITs believe jump in international offers may not be as significant as last year. "At some campuses it may be at similar levels as last year or slightly higher. This is also because offers for key US positions are likely to go down this year," said a placement committee member of one of the older IITs on condition of anonymity.

Last year, IT major Microsoft had led such international offers with $214,600 or roughly Rs 13.9 million at the prevailing exchange rates at that time.

First day of the placement season on December 1 will see some 40 companies including Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Texas Instruments, Intel & Shell conduct recruitment at IIT Madras. At IIT Guwahati, around 45 companies are expected to visit campus on December 1, also known as 'Day Zero' in placement parlance. Of these, 21 marquee recruiters have been put up for 'Graveyard Slot' which begins from midnight till early morning hours on December 1.

IIT Delhi, one of the top ranked IITs in the country, has seen 30 companies offering 500 job profiles till now compared to a total of 373 companies participating last placement season with 829 offers.

BCG, Citibank, Qualcomm, Bajaj, General Electric are coming to IIT Madras for recruitment this year (2018-19) as well. As many as 23 companies have advertised international profiles, most of which are for positions in Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, along with the US. Prominent first-time companies this year include Bain & Company, Nomura, Ather Energy, and Jaguar Land Rover at some of the leading IITs. 
 

Sector-wise, core manufacturing is expected to have a higher presence than last year. At IIT Guwahati, apart from first time recruiter Jaguar Land Rover, other core companies include Mercedes, Ashok Leyland, L&T, Texas Instruments, and Mahindra & Mahindra. "Core manufacturing has slightly increased this placements. However, except for some big companies, most of the core manufacturing players will come in later part of first phase placements," Banerjee told Business Standard.

On the other hand, IIT Madras has seen about 34 percent of the recruiters from core engineering/research and development (R&D) sector, 21 percent from finance/analytics/consulting sectors, and 32 percent from the IT sector with the rest from other sectors. IIT Delhi too is witnessing a rise this year in organizations registering to hire students for core engineering profiles such as electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, apart from upcoming profiles like artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, stochastic modelling and predictive analysis.

IITs this year are also witnessing a rise in non-US international recruiters from European and Asian regions. For instance, foreign organizations that will be offering jobs to the IIT Delhi students are mainly from the European region, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, followed by US. Similarly, IIT Kharagpur has seen an at least 10 per cent rise in Asian recruiters. 

"Asia is picking up. We have several Japanese companies lined up. There has been at least a 10 per cent rise in Asian recruiters," G P Raja Sekhar, chairman, career development centre (CDC) at IIT Kharagpur and head - All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) told Business Standard. Asian recruiters this year at IIT Kharagpur include CBF Techno, Macquarie Group Tokyo, Works Application, Konica Minolta, Taiwan Semiconductors. 

Another interesting trend in this academic year (2018-19) is the increased number of profiles for data analytics, which reflects the current industry trend. There are around 59 analytics/data science job profiles as of now compared to around 48 in the whole of last year. Manu Santhanam, Advisor, Training and Placement, IIT Madras, said, "The number of recruiters coming to campus has seen an upswing this year."

Anishya Madan, Industry Liaison Officer, (T&P), IIT Delhi said, "Initial reaction of industry has been very positive. We hope this trend continues and translates to good hiring numbers." The Training and Placement (T&P) unit of IIT Delhi looks forward to a robust hiring season, which spans from Dec 2018 to May 2019.

This year, there is a jump of over 25 per cent in comparison to last year with respect to number of organizations coming to IIT Delhi with job offers up to now. 

Meanwhile, among the younger IITs, Mandi, located in the hilly state of Himachal Pradesh, has attracted interest from 45 companies till last week, compared to a total of 58 participants in 2017-18. Students at IIT Mandi have already bagged pre-placement offers (PPOs) from prominent recruiters like Goldman Sachs Group, Amazon, Microsoft Corporation, Siemens, Samsung Electronics,  SMS Datatech, Tonichi Insatsu, Truring , MAQ, Wipro and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). 

Of these, Tork motor cycles, SMS data tech, Domino data tech, Sapient, Shopx, Assanjob, Yodlee, Cortex, Optiver and Global design arena will be participating for the first time this year at IIT Mandi.

•  Recruiters flock IITs in 2018-19 with more offers than last season
•  IIT Madras & IIT Delhi witness 20% and 25% surge in participation from recruiters
•  IIT Gwahati and IIT Mandi too witness significant rise in offers this time
•  International offers from Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Apple are on the place
•  Apart from the US, jobs at Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan has been lined up