This year's share of dream and super-dream job offers has spiked. As a result, the overall annual average salary packages have nearly doubled at some of these college campuses.
Shivani Shinde and Vinay Umarji report.
Contrary to popular expectations of a tough year, placements at campuses have begun with a bang, as dream and super-dream job offers rose substantially and companies rushed to hire engineers.
As against a normal year in which these campuses take some months to achieve such numbers, the number of offers this year has seen a spike as companies look to attract talent for growing digital needs and businesses.
"The rush to hire engineers has gone up substantially.
"The number of companies that have come to the campus this year is almost up by 100 per cent.
"So far, almost 166 companies have made offers for our students.
"We have also noticed that students who were doing internships at companies have been accepted by them.
"We expect this rush to hire more technical skills to only rise in the next few years," said Dr V Samuel Rajkumar, director, career development centre, Vellore Institute of Technology.
He added that more than 25 students have been offered more than Rs 25 lakh per annum this year, which is the highest since VIT's inception.
Even as recruiters offer a mix of jobs -- including dream and super-dream offers at a higher salary threshold and additional benefits that vary from campus to campus -- this year's share of dream and super-dream job offers has spiked.
As a result, the overall annual average salary packages have nearly doubled at some of the campuses.
For instance, VIT has seen a rush of companies wanting to hire in the super-dream and dream offer categories.
Usually product tech, financial consulting and consulting firms hire about five students in each category. But, for the batch of 2022, the numbers have gone up significantly.
Microsoft, for instance, which hired around seven to eight students last time, has hired 21 VIT students in the super-dream segment.
Similarly, Societe Generale Group hired 75 students in the super-dream category.
The highest salary came from startup Dyte that offered two students jobs with a CTC of Rs 75 lakh each; this included ESOPs as well.
The Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, which defines dream and super-dream job offers as those above Rs 8-10 lakh and Rs 30 lakh respectively, has also seen a huge jump in recruiters, especially from the IT, consulting and data analytics domain.
Oracle, which had hired five to seven from VNIT last year, has made 25 offers this year, most of which fall in the dream job category.
In fact, as against a total of around 550 students placed in the whole of last year, VNIT has already placed 250. VNIT is also looking at a four times jump in dream job offers.
"The number of non-dream offers is, in fact, less than the dream and super-dream ones this year.
"This jump in such dream offers, above Rs 10 lakh, Rs 20 lakh and Rs 30 lakh, has come on the back of increased requirement of computer science, software development, AI, data analysis and other digitisation skills across sectors like IT, e-commerce and finance," said Kishor Bhurchandi, associate dean, training and placements, VNIT Nagpur.
Also, according to Bhurchandi, recruiters are taking pre-emptive steps to arrest future attrition -- that may arise with the job market opening up in a post-Covid world -- by making an increased number of dream and super-dream job offers.
While the training and placement office could not be reached for a comment, sources indicate that National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, too has seen a double-digit rise in dream and super-dream job offers.
Despite the pandemic, three students were offered annual pay packages of Rs 45 lakh, the highest so far, while nine were offered Rs 43 lakh per annum.
According to a statement by Umesh C Pati, head of training and placement centre, NIT Rourkela, the campus saw 84 companies offering 253 students more than Rs 10 lakh per annum, resulting in an over four per cent rise in average CTC to Rs 9.36 lakh per annum.
Similarly, at VNIT, the average annual CTC has doubled from Rs 6.8 lakh last year to Rs 13 lakh so far this year.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
