KOLKATA: Pre-placement offers (PPOs) — often an early indicator of
campus hiring trends — are up at Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) this year, suggesting that the elite engineering colleges are likely to be relatively insulated from a slowdown in the economy.
It’s still early in the process — PPOs come in till end-November before final placements begin — but so far, IITs of Roorkee, Madras and Guwahati say the number of offers was up by 8-25% compared with this time last year. IIT-Hyderabad has already crossed last year’s total PPO tally.
According to various IITs, companies that have made pre-placement offers so far include Microsoft, Citibank India, Flipkart, IBM India, Cisco, Qualcomm,
Reliance Industries, Samsung R&D, Schlumberger, Uber, Visa Inc, Amazon, DE Shaw, General Electric, JPMorgan Chase, Texas Instruments, Adobe and Nutanix.
“The overall job scenario may be negative but even companies that have cut down on hiring numbers will want to recruit the best and the brightest. That pool is not too large. Demand and supply are conducive so far as IITs go,” said an IIT-Roorkee placement team member.
The highest number of PPOs so far have come from the information technology and related sectors, said most of the IITs ET spoke to.
Institutes Confident
While the jumps in offer numbers are more modest than last year’s, IITs are confident.
“We are relatively insulated from negative industry trends as our students are typically considered for core engineering, design, hi-tech and research & development profiles,” said Pradeep Yemula, the faculty-in-charge of placements at IIT-Hyderabad. “We have also established long-term relations with industry on specific cutting-edge technology areas, such as 5G, data sciences, machine learning, etc.,” he added.
IIT-Roorkee has bagged 78 PPOs so far, up 17% from the same time last year, and the highest offer till now is of Rs 43.3 lakh a year. IIT-Madras has got 97 offers, up nearly 25% from the same time last year, while IIT-Guwahati has seen an 8% jump at 86 PPOs.
Firms that have given PPOs for the first time this year include Tesco, Rubrik, GE Healthcare, HP and Kivi Capital at IIT-Guwahati; Bajaj Auto, Walmart and Viasat at IIT-Madras; Philips at IIT-Hyderabad; and Cohesity, Fidelity Business Services-India, Optum and Rubrik at IIT-Roorkee.