At IIT, students expected to be spoilt for choice

It could be an early Christmas for students at the Indian Institutes of Technology this year.

The final placement process, which kicks off on December 1, is expected to be a season of bonanza, with recruiting companies queuing up once again after a two-year lull.

According to IITs, there is an increase of at least 15-20 per cent in the salaries being offered on campus. Going by the buoyant pre-placement offers, many IITs are comparing this year's placements to the 2007 levels.

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"Already over 140 firms have confirmed their participation in the final placement process at the campus. We expect salaries to rise by 15-20 per cent this year, given the buoyancy in the market," said a training and placement member at IIT Kharagpur.

The institute, which has already received 44 PPOs, is likely to see close to 1,500 students taking part in the placement process.

In terms of sectors, information technology and IT-enabled services (ITeS) is set to lead the pack, followed by manufacturing, automobile, finance and banking, consulting, market research institutions, and aeronautics, to name a few.

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"While firms from the IT and ITeS sector have been overwhelming in number, almost over 50 per cent, automobile sector has also been quite demanding this year particularly.

"With a successful PPO season behind us, the final placement scenario is definitely going to improve as compared to last year.

"Already out of the 15-odd PPOs that we received, the highest salary is reported to be at Rs 12 lakh (Rs 1.2 million) as against Rs 900,000 last year," said Saurabh Basu, faculty in-charge, training and placements at IIT Guwahati.

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So far, over 100 firms have already given their consent for participation in the final placement process at IIT Guwahati.
In all, 647 students, including 250 from MTech, will be participating in the process that begins Wednesday.

At IIT Kanpur, where a batch of 850 will be taking part in the placement process, firms like Boeing and HAL, representing the aeronautics sector have already confirmed their participation.

"Some people have already started arriving and we have already begun distributing and rationing the days for students.

"Around 50 firms have confirmed their acceptance of our invitations and we expect the number to increase as the days go by," said Sanjeev Kashalkar, registrar at IIT Kanpur.

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After December 14, the IITs would take a break for the inter-IIT sports meet.

The institutes would reopen in the first week of January 2011 and resume the placement process, which may be open till June 2011.

IIT Roorkee has so far received 52 PPOs, the highest among all the IITs till now this year.

The institute says over 100 companies have already confirmed participation and the salary levels are up by 13 per cent so far.

The highest offer on campus till date is Rs 18 lakh (Rs 1.8 million) yearly, against Rs 16 lakh (Rs 1.6 million) made last year.

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"Response from the companies is very good. We would be placing around 1,100 students. The placement levels could be compared to that of 2007," said P K Jain, chairperson, IIT Roorkee.

IIT Bombay, which has received registrations from 200 companies so far, would be placing around 1,300 students.

A placement official said the institute has received 12 PPOs so far.

IITs and other higher education institutions had hit a low in placement offers during the global financial turmoil in the last couple of years.

So much so that while students at some of the IITs had received regret letters from companies, a few major banking and finance recruiters did not participate in the placements, resulting in a dip in salary offers.