10 things you should know about IIT placement season this year

The placement drive at the premier IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) is all set to commence from December 1, 2014. And according to speculations, reports and sources, year 2014 is expected to witness a robust hiring season.

From a remarkable rise in PPOs (Pre-placement offers) and PPIs (Pre-placement interviews) to 20% increase in the salaries offered, the IIT placement season this year is expected to witness everything good.  

Anticipating the placement trends this year, Ujjwal, Placement manager at IIT Bombay said, “According to the speculations in the market, we are expecting to see a rise in the number of core jobs as well as in non-core jobs. Also, we are definitely expecting a good response in the second phase of placements because by that time the financial year of 2015 will end. With this, the companies will see the exact results and plan accordingly for their future recruitments”.

He further added, “ A lot of companies will be visiting the campus for the first time this year which includes names like Baker Hughes, Visa Inc, Yahoo Japan and Bridgewater Associates which is a hedge fund in US. Also, there are companies which used to hire from the campus but did not recruit students last year. These companies will be participating in the placement drive this year and include names like Hindustan Unilever and ANZ Bank”.

Amidst all the expected speculations and trends around the placement season at IITs this year, here are some quick facts you should know:

1. Even before the commencement of final placements, students at most of the IITs are flooded with pre-placement offers. The institutes are witnessing larger number of PPOs from big companies as compared to last year, indicating a better hiring season.
2. The number of offers per company is likely to be higher and is expected to be at par with the conversion of internship to jobs which has been really high this year as well. The total pre-placement offers made before the beginning of formal placement season may be much higher though not necessarily as lucrative.
3. The institutes hope for a repeat of the Rs 1-crore-plus packages seen last year. To make offers more attractive, even stock options were doled out.
4. This year, there has been an increase of 20% in the salaries as compared to last year.
5. Baker Hughes, one of the world's largest oilfield services companies, will be visiting some of the IITs this year –for the first time ever – to recruit students during the placement drive.
6. Visa Inc, world's largest payments network, will make its debut on Indian campuses and is expected to make more than 100 job offers across eight IITs including IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Madras.
7. The company is looking to fill 11 job profiles, including software engineers, data platform software engineers, information product engineers, networking engineers, data science engineers, infrastructure architects, systems engineers and network provisioning analysts.
8. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign has found resonance with the IITs, which are willing to push manufacturing firms up to Day-1 slots during the final placement process.
9. E-commerce companies are aiming for a massive recruitment drive this year with companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra and MakeMyTrip planning to increase their intake.
10. Nomura Research Institute (NRI), Japan's largest consulting and IT consulting firm will be hiring from IITs this year for a completely new job profile of management consultants.

Stay tuned to shiksha.com for more news and updates on placements at IITs this year!