Placement scenario looking up

Chennai: IIT students seem to prefer core and financial companies as their career option rather than IT companies. According to the data provided by the IITM’s placement office, 1,383 students (B.Tech, B.Tech (dual), M.Tech, M.B.A, M.A, M.Sc, MS and PhD) had registered to attend placement this year.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle on Tuesday, Lt Col Jayakumar, deputy registrar (students and placement), IITM said that the placement season would begin on December 1 and go on till February/March.

“This year over 230 companies have confirmed that they will take part in the placement season and we expect more to join. We don’t see any impact of recession or a sluggish economy in our placement process,” he said.

Pointing out that a multinational company had offered the highest salary of '82.38 lakh last year, the placement deputy registrar was of the opinion that this year the amount would be a bit higher.

Reiterating that IITians do not look at IT companies as their career option, Mr Jayakumar said that they mostly get finance, consulting or core engineering companies visiting them. IT companies that come to the institute recruit students for specialised verticals.

Asked why IITians do not join IT companies, Prof. V.G.Idichandy, former deputy director and Professor Emeritus of the ocean engineering department at IITM says that students do not show any interest when an IT company approaches the institute for placement.

Some get placed in specialised verticals, but leave it soon. “IITians expect job satisfaction and not money alone. Companies too don’t provide them with proper jobs as IITians are made for research activities, not the regular programming job,” he said.

A final year B.Tech student echoed Prof. Idichandy’s view and attributed lack of research opportunity in IT companies in India.

“Companies abroad provide you with a lot of scope to research in newer fields but in India, they are confined to mere programming and using a set of programming codes to accomplish a task.

We look at core companies where we can invent and innovate to show our expertise, besides talent,” the student said.

Next: 900 students from Anna University get placed

900 students from Anna University get placed

Chennai: With several training programmes and student-friendly initiati­ves, the Anna Uni­ve­r­sity’s departme­nts, including the Co­llege of Engineering, Guin­dy, have placed over 900 students.

“We started our placement in August this year with 75 companies recruiting 900 students out of the registered 3,000 up to November and the pl­a­cement will go on till May next year.

Some top reputed companies, including Mic­ro­soft, Amazon, Ebay, Mahindra & Mahin­d­ra Accenture and Fo­rd visited us for placement,” Anna Univer­sity Vice-Cha­ncellor Pr­of M. Raja­ram sa­id. Microsoft had off­ered the highest sa­lary of Rs 16.5 lakh per annum and the average salary stood at Rs 4 lakh per year.

“We expect 75 more companies to recruit our students in the coming months. This year, we have taken extra care to help students get placed in top companies. We conduct training sessions in batches for 100 students every week, in which we train them in all aspects of corporate culture, including communication skills,” the Vice-Chancellor added.

The university has distributed a booklet to over 3,000 of its students, which provides tips and guidelines to help students get placed.

Meanwhile, 607 students from about 300 private engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University participated in the Tamil Nadu state level placement held for students from the Chennai and Coimbatore zones. “We will soon be having another round of placement for students from the Madurai zone. We hope that more students will get recruited in this drive,” he said.

Next: IT firms eye deemed varsities for talent under one roof

IT firms eye deemed varsities for talent under one roof

Chennai: IT companies look at top deemed universities, like VIT, Sastra and SRM, as their hunting ground as they get thousands of good quality students under one roof.

Sekar Viswanathan, vi­ce-president, VIT Univer­si­ty, says that the overall picture in the job market seemed to be good, with companies recruiting students from top universities like VIT and Sastra.

“Companies get top quality students in the same college, so they come to top colleges to recruit them as it makes their job easy too. They also prefer institutes, which have a mix of north and south Indian students as they can be placed in their facilities in Pune or Indore. D.E. Shaw offered the highest salary of over Rs 14 lakhs per year,” he said.

Pointing out that companies take fewer M.Tech and MCA students than B.Tech, Sekar Viswa­na­­than said that compani­es get more value for work from B.Tech stude­n­ts with less salary than M. Tech and M.C.A students.

Prof S. Vaidhyasub­rama­niam, Dean (Planning & Development), Sastra Uni­versity, too echoed Sekar Vi­swanathan’s view when he said that considering the higher benchmarks due to tougher market conditions, the placement sce­ne was reasonably good and had tided off strong ma­rket waves that carried negative sentiments.

Meanwhile, a head hun­ter from one of the top IT companies said that they looked at deemed universities as they offered industry-ready course modules to students, to make them work on the project from day one.