Older IITs gift placement advantage to new peers

New institutes started their placements a month in advance

The new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have received a generous gift from their older counterparts — they can begin placements a month before their elder siblings.

IITs say given that most companies prefer recruiting from the older IITs, it was unanimously decided that the new IITs could begin their placements a month in advance. This rule, however, would be in place for three years only, and would be reviewed and could be extended after that.

As a result, some of the new IITs could already place 20-25 per cent students.

“It was decided that the new IITs could begin placements in November against December as companies could recruit students from the new campuses, too. We have already completed 20 per cent of our placements,” said a placement official from IIT Patna, which has seen its highest salary package double at Rs 37 lakh per annum against Rs 18 lakh last year. The IIT plans to place over 100 students this year.

IIT-Mandi (Himachal Pradesh) has already placed around 25 per cent of its total batch size.

Companies that have already recruited from new IITs include Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

“Most companies recruit in double digits. Thus, we thought that if the new IITs could begin placements a month in advance, the companies could recruit from their campuses, too. Besides, a number of students to be placed at the newer IITs is not as big as ours,” said the director of an old IIT.

While the older IITs have batch sizes of 1,300-1,700 each, the batch size of newer IITs is not more than 130.

IIT-Ropar in Punjab, which will begin placement on December 4, said given the examination of students on its campus, it has decided to begin placements this month. The institute has seen Amazon, eBay and Arista Networks, among others, confirming participation on the campus. The IIT plans to place 105 students this year against 96 last year.

The older IITs, which began their placements on December 1, have seen their students bag lucrative job offers from companies.

Students at some IITs have been offered salary packages of Rs 1.3 crore per annum. So far, the average salaries have seen an increase of over 20 per cent.

Companies that have recruited from IITs this year include Google, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, D B Centre, Opera Solutions, Microsoft, IBM, Schlumberger, Shell and SAP, among others.

Most of the companies have recruited in double digits from the older IITs.

The first phase of the final placements at older IITs will be held between December 1 and 20 and the second phase will begin on January 6 to April-end, 2014. For the new IITs, the placement season will be on till March 2014.