CHENNAI: After a gloomy start to the
placement season, a gradual increase in hiring by
recruiters over the past two months have raised hopes of a normal
placement season amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While IT majors such as Cognizant, TCS, Wipro are still screening
candidates through tests, IT product companies have hired students virtually and handed offer letters to many.
The recruitment process was slightly delayed this year as the Centre took time to waive exams for pre-final year students and promote them to next semester.
“Compared to the grim situation in March and April,
colleges are heaving a sigh of relief. The pandemic has impacted the number of offers and number of companies recruiting via campus placements this year. But the situation is improving and we are hopeful of a good placement season,” principal of a city engineering college said.
“23 recruiters, mostly IT product companies, have completed hiring at Sri Sairam Engineering College. We expect around 100 companies to hire from our campus this year,” said L Arunachalam, dean (training and placement) at Sairam Group of Institutions. Last year, 123 companies visited the college for recruitment.
Anna University sent out invitations to around 500 companies for campus placements. The university started campus placement at the end of August.
“Despite the pandemic, the recruitment process is going on as usual. Around 60 companies have recruited our students so far and bulk hiring will take place in the coming weeks,” said S Iniyan, director, centre for university-industry collaboration, Anna University.
Students from computer science and IT streams are getting placed in IT companies.
“Though we feared
impact of the pandemic on recruitment at the beginning, it has been good so far and we have a steady stream of recruiters,” said Sriram Padmanaban, director of the career centre at SRM Institute of Science and Technology.
He said none of the major recruiters have backed out but acknowledged a slight drop in recruitment. “I think, from January, many companies will visit campuses for hiring with travel restrictions eased,” he said.
V Samuel Rajkumar, director (placement and training), Vellore Institute of Technology, said the deemed university has received at least 2,000 offers from more than 250 companies. “Covid-19 had an impact on recruitment and VIT is an exception where several companies recruited students despite the pandemic. It is almost similar to last year’s placement season,” he said.