Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras witnessed the highest ever number of job offers during the first phase of its placement season. As many as 888 job offers and 136 pre-placement offers were made, taking the total to 1,024 offers in technology disciplines.

The previous high was 1,019 offers made in the 2014-15 academic year. However, that also included offers for MBA students.

Around 1,300 students had registered for the phase I placements held between December 1 and 8, and there were more than 490 job profiles from nearly 326 companies. Out of the registered companies, 195 companies visited IIT Madras for recruitment in Phase I.

Including the accepted pre-placement offers (PPOs), a total of 844 students have already been placed at the end of Phase I placements against 766 students and 114 PPOs during the same time last year. The total number of companies which participated in Phase I placements last year was also 195.

This year Micron Technology and Intel Technology made 26 offers each. Microsoft and Citibank made 22 offers apiece while Qualcomm made 21. As many as 248 jobs pertained to analytics, finance and consulting, 346 jobs to Core and R&D and 290 to information technology. The departments that had more than 80 per cent placement during Phase I include computer science, electrical engineering and engineering design.

“We had an excellent Phase I this year in spite of the reduced duration of only 8 days, which saw us breaching the 1,000-offer mark (including PPOs). The demand for students in the computing and analytics sectors was strong. We expect more core companies to come in Phase II,” said Manu Santhanam, advisor, placement, IIT Madras. The phase II of placements will begin in the second half of January 2019.