IIT Placements 2020: Job offers withdrawn, graduates search employment on social media

Last year’s batch of IIT-Madras got a total of 1,050 offers, including 126 pre-placement offers (PPOs). Out of the total, 28 offers were withdrawn. 

IIT Placements 2020: The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus and the severity of the ongoing pandemic situation adversely affected the economic sector of the country. Reports suggest that jobs offered to students during placement drives of high-end universities and colleges revoked due to economic slowdown. A reputed media portal reported, “Sumit (name changed), a mechanical engineer who graduated last year with a dual degree from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B), has been looking for a job on social media since August 2020. He was among the few lucky students to secure a job in the first week of the placement drive at the institute in December 2019 and was hopeful of joining soon after his graduation, but the offer was rescinded by the company that had hired him.”

Media reports suggest that amid the pandemic circumstances, IITs conducted their placement drives online following the precautionary laid down by the health ministry and reported a good round of placements for the batch of students graduating in 2020. However, by August, after bearing severe losses and financial crunches in their businesses during the lockdown, several recruiters decided to withdraw their offers.

While some IITs are allowing students to take part in the placement drives being held for the current batch, others are providing job leads through alumni networks. However, most of the recent graduates are left in the lurch. “Since August 2020, I have sent a number of mails to placement in-charge and dean of student affairs seeking permission to sit for this year’s placement session, but there has been no positive response. So I have started looking for jobs by highlighting my strengths on social media and job portals,” said Sumit.

Meanwhile, IIT-Bombay decided not to respond to queries related to this despite repeated attempts. Going by the previous reports on placement drives conducted by IITs, At IIT-Madras, last year’s batch got a total of 1,050 offers, including 126 pre-placement offers (PPOs). Professor CS Shankar Ram, advisor (training and placement), IIT-Madras, suggests that out of the total, 28 reports were withdrawn. The institute is now allowing graduates, who lost their jobs or could not secure a placement offer in the previous round, to appear for the ongoing placement season. The institute also reached out to recruiters to reinstate their offers.

In May 2020, IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao also made a public appeal to recruiters to not withdraw offers as students, who had secured jobs, would not be allowed to appear for placements again. Over 1,100 students had received job offers at IIT-Delhi during the placement drive of 2019-20, of which 11 were withdrawn.

Read More:

• IIT-Bombay Placements 2020 witnesses 18% drop in job offers