Job offers pour in at IITs on day one of placements

IITs said number of job offers flowing in are much higher this year than what they saw in recent past

On the first day of placement, action on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) campuses began as early as 4 am.

The premier engineering institutes which began first phase of placement on Monday saw a good number of companies visit the campus making big-ticket job offers. The IITs said the number of job offers flowing in was much higher this year than what they saw in the recent past.

Many students bagged pre-placement offers which have got converted into Day One offers. Among the companies offering jobs include Samsung Korea, Deutsche Bank, Hindustan Unilever, LinkedIn, Qualcomm, Samsung, Tata Steel, Wipro, Sony, Goldman Sachs and Reliance Industries, among others.

Typically, the highest-paying jobs make the cut for day-one placements. But at IIT- Bombay, the institute has decided to offer Day One placement slots to manufacturing companies alongside consulting and financial firms.

“Manufacturing has had a raw deal so far. In keeping with the government's policy to give it a fillip, we have invited manufacturing and engineering companies on Day One,” said Avijit Chatterjee, in charge of placements at IIT-Bombay.

The number of recruiters is also projected to rise. At IIT-Guwahati, besides marquee recruiters such as Google, Microsoft and Oracle, first-timers, ServiceNow, Walmart and LinkedIn have confirmed their participation in final placements. Against 120-130 recruiters last year, IIT-Guwahati is expecting 200 this year.

Other IITs did not reply to an email questionnaire.  

On the start-up hiring front, while IIT Kharagpur said it has not invited startups yet, Housing.com, said this recruitment season it plans to hire around 100-150 top IIT graduates for local and global positions in the company. Housing.com was among the few large start-ups to recruit from IITs last year.

Salary packages at IITs have so far increased between 10 per cent and 20 per cent. Apart from better average compensation, the institutes hope for a repeat of the Rs 1-crore-plus packages seen last year. To make offers more attractive, even stock options were doled out. Google had made Rs 1.5-crore offers across IITs in 2013.