Multinationals Looking for Talent Beyond IITs: New-age Universities Like Chandigarh University are Attracting Big Names for Campus Placements

/ -- With changing times, it's not just the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) but also the non-IIT engineering institutions that have seen attractive job offers and pay packages from elite brands/companies during their final placements. Normally, the trend in the past that is going on for years is that the IITs placements are in news with hefty packages being offered by dream companies, but the placement trends over the last five years shows some unusual movements as more and more top recruiters have now started hiring students from other premier engineering colleges and offering them competitive salary packages.

Universities like Chandigarh University (CU) has taken the lead in attracting reputed brands such as Amazon, Flipkart, Microsoft, IBM, SAP Labs, Cognizant, John Deere, Mindtree, Directi, Adobe for the recruitment of engineering students. There has been a jump of 30% in number of companies visiting CU campus during placement session 2018-19 while the number of common recruiters who have selected students from IITs across India and Chandigarh University have touched 50 this year while last year this number was 35.

During the session 2018-19, IIT Roorkee managed to attract 312 companies offering 1,152 placements while IIT Kharagpur registered 362 multinationals offering 618 placements and IIT registered 326 multinationals offering 490 placements. The placement numbers at Chandigarh University have been equally impressive with more than 380 MNCs recruiting 3,750 students across 15 engineering disciplines. There are some other similarities between the recruitment pattern between IITs and CU which includes more than 75 Fortune-500 companies recruiting engineering talent from IITs while there are 40 such companies in case of Chandigarh University.

Companies such World's leading IT giant, Microsoft, have been a consistent recruiter of Computer Science Engineering students from 6-7 IITs such as IIT Roorkee, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and Chandigarh University. This year Microsoft tripled the number of selections at CU and touched the figure of 15. Other IT Companies which have commonly recruited students from IITs and CU include Amazon, Directi, SAP Labs, Cognizant, Deloitte, Capgemini, Wipro, Mindtree, L&T Infotech. In fact Wipro has recruited 394 engineering students at Chandigarh University this session which has been the highest number of offers made by IT MNC across North India. This is not the end, Global companies IBM, Mindtree, Capegemini have jointly selected 507 students which is again highest number of offers made by the MNCs in North India.

While in other allied engineering branches such as Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Communication and Civil Engineering there are 19 common recruiters between IITs and Chandigarh University which includes ZS Associates, Samsung Engineering, L&T Constructions, MU-Sigma, ATS Infrastructure, Hyundai Motors.

"Gone are the days when the bluechip companies would visit IITs only looking for fresh engineering talent, in fact the companies are looking for students which have the right blend of knowledge about the latest technology advancements in the industry, aptitude and communication skills and it does not bother them the place or institution where they are getting from," said Dr. R.S.Bawa, Vice-Chancellor, Chandigarh University.

The major reason attributed to this shift in focus of dream companies' hunting grounds for fresh talent from non-IITs is that other premier institutions like Chandigarh University have actively engaged with the Industry to understand their requirements. One such step in the direction of minimizing the Industry-Academia gap is that CU has taken lead in offering Industry Collaborative Engineering programs which includes specialized CSE programs in the emerging areas of Cloud Computing, Information Security, Mobile Computing, Big Data and Analytics that are being offered in association with IBM.

Although there is no doubt that IITs are the most prestigious and premier institutions in the field of engineering which has world-wide reputation but it is high time that the engineering aspirants should keep in mind before preparing the list of prospective universities or colleges for their admissions as with changing times non-IITs have also picked up in terms of attracting good brands for campus placements and the students need not to drop their precious years for just getting into the prestigious IITs.

About Chandigarh University
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