What slowdown? IITs register bumper pre-placements offer

Bucking the slowdown in the Indian employment market, major corporates including Microsoft, Amazon and Goldman Sachs are recruiting students across the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) with record packages. The development is astonishing as the final placements in the older IITs are yet to start. As per the data by placement cells of these institutes, pre-placement offers (PPOs) in IITs at Mumbai, Kharagpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, and Gandhinagar for the batch of 2020, job offers have jumped significantly by 19-24 percent.

As per a report in financial daily, the Economic Times, IIT Hyderabad has in fact registered a jump in job offers by two times. Notably, more placement offers are likely to take place in the coming week, before the final round of placement starts in December. The bumper hiring is significant with the fact that the Indian economy is witnessing a major slowdown. The country's economy grew at a pace of 5 percent in the April-June quarter, clocking the slowest growth in 6 years.

Encouraging placement numbers

The number of PPOs at IIT-Bombay jumped to 24 percent to 163 vis-à-vis last year. Similarly, IIT-Hyderabad saw the PPOs spiking significantly from 19 in 2018-19 to 37 as of November 2019. PPOs have increased 19 percent to 119 at IIT-Guwahati. Similarly, PPOs at IIT-Gandhinagar jumped 20 percent with Kahargpur registering 261 placements and more in the pipeline. The numbers clearly show that the premier technology institutes have remained untouched by the economic slowdown. SV Nathan, chief talent officer at Deloitte, a regular recruiter at the institutes, said, "It's all about quality. IITs are among the institutions which have the highest standards of students coming in through the doors. That's why recruiters will continue to throng IITs for talent, irrespective of any slowdown."

IT software and hardware companies have offered maximum PPOs followed by companies in the analytics and consulting sectors, IITs informed. All the IITs have informed that the placements have increased in comparison to last year. The companies which have offered the maximum offered the PPOs include Microsoft, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Samsung R&D, Adobe, Qualcomm and Rubrik.

Head of human capital management at Goldman Sachs in Bengaluru, Vidya Lakshmi said that the company offered 64 PPOs across 10 IITs in the graduating class of 2020. The company visited IITs in Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Guwahati, Varanasi, Chennai, Dhanbad, and Hyderabad. "In 2019, 96 students from these IITs summer interned with us, with approximately 70% receiving preplacement offers to return. Recruitment through visiting the IITs will continue to be a focus for Goldman Sachs," she added.