Campus placements kick off in Tamil Nadu engineering colleges

CHENNAI: A handful of engineering students from top colleges were offered 35% more in pay packages from dream and super dream companies as the placement season kicked off for the year 2019. Microsoft offered Rs 39 lakh each to 8 students of VIT, Vellore—the highest ever offered to any student in the college.
Colleges across Tamil Nadu churn out about two lakh graduate engineers each year with product companies and start-ups getting into recruitment mode early.The large recruiters—IT services companies follow suit in August. The early offers arent any indication of the season ahead as large recruiters—who are migrating to just in time hiring come later. Dream and super dream companies are those that pay more than Rs 7 lakh a year. Some colleges bracket dream companies in the Rs 4 lakh plus category.

At VIT, 16 candidates received super dream offers with pay ranging from Rs 21 lakh to Rs 39 lakh from companies including Microsoft, PayPal and DE Shaw. “We are quite happy with the way the season has kicked off. We are not dependant on IT services. Last year, captives like Dell and Bank of America took in students in large numbers and we hope they will do the same this year,” said Samuel Rajkumar, director of placement, VIT. Amazon which made super dream offers in colleges like VIT and Velammal has given campuses a miss, till now.
Sources say colleges achieved just half of their targets last year as bulk recruiters (software service companies) developed cold feet and preferred off campus hiring. Nearly a third of all hiring was off campus last year. Tech firm Cognizant, a large recruiter of fresh talent, skipped last year’s campus, is now hiring students off campus from the 2018 batch.
“Being able to predict talent requirement more accurately and relying on just in time hiring is here to stay,” said K Ramachandran, head of strategy, 361degreeminds, an e-learning startup.
At SASTRA, companies including PayPal have made 24 offers upwards of Rs 15 lakh per annum up to Rs 21.5 lakh per annum. While the overall package has not seen a significant increase from last year, Vaidhya Subramanian, dean, planning and development, SASTRA University says the story is yet to unfold. “Everyday till the end of the month, we have companies coming in. Appetite from product companies continues to be the same and we are hoping to have 200 students placed before bulk recruiters come in,” he said.
Phillip Praveen of Rajalakshmi Engineering College is pinning his hopes on specialised hiring requirements of companies. “30 offers have been made by 5 companies including Zoho and Doodle Blue. TCS will come later this month for digital hiring,” he said.
Like last year, product companies have been the first to reach campuses. Companies incuding Zoho, Coda Global and Solartis made offers at Velammal Engineering College. Close to 50 offers have been made with salaries ranging from Rs 4.6 lakh to Rs 6.60 lakh per annum.
Ramachandran adds that several trends are sending jitters amongst engineering students. “While earlier knowledge of coding and programming and some soft skills was enough, the focus now is entirely on tech and programming skills be it with automation, cloud, data analytics,” he says.