Jump in PPOs hint at better placement season at IITs this year

Nearly 60% of PPOs went to students of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Departments

If the rising number of pre-placement offers (PPOs) pouring in at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) campuses are anything to go by, the premier institutes are on for a decent final placement season this year. 

For instance, while IIT Madras saw 56 per cent rise in PPOs, IIT Guwahati has seen the same increase by 46 per cent this year so far with even more offers expected to come in. IIT Roorkee, on the other hand, has seen a 15 per cent jump in PPOs so far this year compared to similar period last year. The institute has attracted 135 offers so far this year. 

According to placement chairs at these institutes, recruiters are increasingly preferring to hire through the pre-placement offers. PPOs are offered by a recruiter after a student complete summer internships at the company. 

"One of the principal reasons is an increase in the number of internships in companies that are large recruiters such as the American Software company Microsoft, the telecommunications equipment firm Qualcomm and the multinational financial services firm Goldman Sachs," said Manu Santhanam, Advisor, Training and Placement, IIT Madras. Till November 6 this year, IIT Madras attracted as many as 114 PPOs as against 73 in the preceding academic year (2016-17).

While the Core Sectors accounted for the highest number of PPOs, there were also a large number of offers from financial services firms. The major recruiters were Qualcomm, Microsoft, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Samsung R&D, and Texas Instruments.

Nearly 60 per cent of the PPOs went to students of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Departments as the Core Engineering Industry caters to the other engineering disciplines.

IIT Guwahati, on the other hand, saw PPOs rise from 80 last year till early November to 117 this year for the said period. Recruiters like Volvo, Bosch, Intel will be recruiting from IIT Guwahati this placement season.

"Increasingly recruiters want to hire through PPO mode even though it is still a relatively small portion of total batch. This is because recruiters get to work closely with the students during internships and gauge their performance. As institute, we welcome PPOs since this reduces our load in conducting the final placement process," K Mohanty, chairperson, placements at IIT Guwahati.

According to some of the placement chairs, the rise in PPOs may, however, not translate into lesser number of offers in final placement process.

"We have seen a 15 per cent rise in PPOs yet the total number of PPOs are still hardly 10-12 per cent of total number of offers required. Hence, bulk of the offers will come during the final placement season," said N P Padhy, Professor-in-Charge, Training and Placement, IIT Roorkee.