Placements off to a flying start at IITs

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) saw a better performance on the first day of the final placements this year as compared to the last year.

IITs, which started the first leg of the final placements on Tuesday, said job offers have gone up 20-30 per cent this year as against last year.

This year, the number of days of placement has been reduced to 10 against 15 to accommodate the upcoming Inter-IIT Sports Meet, hosted by IIT-Madras and scheduled from December 14. The second leg of the placements will begin in January.

At IIT-Guwahati, Oracle made the highest international offer of $140,000 (approximately Rs 93 lakh), excluding employee stock options and other components, said institute sources. The average domestic compensation package on the first day was Rs 25 lakh.

Barring the last slot for the day, which would see 14 firms participating, IIT-Guwahati saw about 25 companies making close to 100 offers, with 67 being made in the first slot.

The day saw 16 international offers. WhatsApp emerged as the highest international recruiter with 12 offers for jobs in Singapore. Oracle and Microsoft followed with two offers each. Uber was a first-time recruiter.

IIT-Madras began its placements with a graveyard shift, for job offers abroad. The five companies that booked slots for this shift were Microsoft, Oracle, VISA, Google and Bloomberg - the news and data company being a new entrant for the session.

"Overall, the placements appear to be very good with a fantastic response for the graveyard session," said Babu Viswanathan, advisor, training & placement, IIT-Madras. "We've had 300 companies register with us offering over 420 profiles, despite a smaller window of number of days."

The graveyard shift saw six international offers being made, including Microsoft (3) and Oracle, Google and VISA making one offer each. Day-one also saw management consultancies and computer science companies.

The institute said 266 companies participated, offering 391 profiles, against 221 companies last year.

Start-ups have been slotted for the second day. One hundred and twenty-nine start-ups have registered this year, against 56 last year. These offered 198 profiles, against 85 last year.

IIT-Madras is seeing first-time recruiters such as Dahlberg, Roland Berger, Wrig Nanosystems and FinMechanics.

In its first slot, IIT-Roorkee saw nine companies on campus with a whopping 74 offers, said N P Padhy, professor-in-charge, training & placement office. Microsoft gave 19 offers. Salary packages were between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 25 lakh. International offers were given by Oracle (2), Google (2) and Microsoft (1).

Padhy said they saw a 30 per cent rise in salaries and number of offers.

IIT-Kanpur saw close to 18 companies, primarily software and technology ones, in the first slot.