Placement season nears, fear of lesser pay grips students

As placement season approaches and students gear up for the selection processes, there is a growing sense of fear that pay packages may be lower or certain sectors and companies may give campus placements a miss this year.

“Given the economic slowdown, some of us are worried that the packages offered may be lower than the previous years,” said a final year marketing student of NMIMS University’s school of management. “The average pay package last year was around Rs 18 lakh per annum and the IT sector was the biggest recruiter. However, since there is an increasing trend of lay-offs in the IT industry, some of us are concerned that this year, fewer companies will turn up,” he said.

One of the placement coordinators of the institute said: “There is certainly anxiety among students. Some sectors might see a slump this year but based on the summer placements this year, we are hopeful.”

While MBA students are worried that the number of offers from the IT sector might be lesser this time, those in engineering colleges are worried that there might be fewer offers from the manufacturing and strategy sectors.

“The demand in the IT sector has evolved from coders to expertise in more specific fields like artificial intelligence and data analytics. However, offers in strategic roles might be fewer this year,” said one of the placement coordinators at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. “The companies that usually come for campus placements will continue to come this year too. We are still waiting to see how many new companies sign up for placements. Of course, students are worried but our summer placements have been good and many have converted into pre-placement offers,” he added.

Rahul Nagpal, the head of students’ placement committee at SPJIMR, too, said based on the autumn placement statistics, students had nothing to fear. “This year, we saw an exceptional number of autumn placement offers. Most offers came from the FMCG industry. If these numbers are any indicator, we have nothing to worry,” said Nagpal.