The Hindu Business Line : Cos in wait and watch mode, go slow

Hyderabad, Nov. 10 This Diwali brought no cheer to Mr Sridhar (name changed), a final year BE student at Gayatri Vidyarthi Parishad college in Visakhapatnam, who is among the 59 students selected for Infosys a few months ago.

They were to get the offer letter by Diwali as promised by the recruiting executives of the Bangalore-based company. But none of his friends nor he received the letter.

Keane recruited 125 students from Mahalingam College (Coimbatore) last year, but has not sent the call letter to even one student till date.

Satyam Computer Services was to come to Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology (CBIT, Hyderabad) in July this year for campus interviews. But they did not. “They wanted a slot in March. But we told them it could be done in July,” a CBIT executive said.

Though this doesn’t mean that the IT and ITES companies have stopped hiring completely, it certainly reflects the wait-and-watch approach of the firms.

In Coimbatore, the recruitment numbers have fallen significantly this year when compared to 2006-07.

While smaller companies have not come to campus, the bigger players have raised their selection criteria and tightened the process. The lower numbers also reflected the low participation at job fairs (from 72 in 2006-07 to 64 in 2007-08) by colleges.

Top firms such as Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro, which generally vied with each other for the best hands, are maintaining silence. Wipro and Cognizant have reportedly indicated that they are not coming to the campus this year.

Mr Mohamed Tajudeen, Placement Officer at Crescent Engineering College near Chennai, too admitted that the IT placements were lower, with Accenture, Satyam and BirlaSoft deciding to stay off.

Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology (CBIT, Hyderabad), however, has seen an increased intake, despite the slowdown.

“Last year, they picked 688 students. This year, we have already registered 545 in the first semester itself,” said Mr N. L. N. Reddy, Head of Training and Placements of CBIT.

Cognizant topped the list with 201 (as against 175 last year), followed by Infosys 87 (83). There was a dip in intake by Wipro at 43 from 84.

Salaries

Despite the slowdown and the resultant drop in placements, the entry level salaries have gone up to Rs 3.5 lakh a year from Rs 2.75 lakh.

Infosys, for one, has increased the offer to engineering graduates this year in some colleges to Rs 3.25 lakh from Rs 3 lakh.

iflex (now Oracle Financial) has increased salaries to Rs 2.70 lakh from Rs 2.40 lakh. TCS and Mahindra, however, retained the salary levels at Rs 3.15 lakh and Rs 3 lakh respectively.

Core sectors up salaries

Interestingly, the intake by non-IT companies such as L&T and Tata Power has gone up, keeping in tune with raising salaries.

“As a result, the ratio of 70:30 (IT and core sector) in picking up students would change to 60:40 this year,” Mr Reddy said.

Caterpillar has offered Rs 6.07 lakh to a BE (Mechcanical) graduate in Chennai.

(With inputs from L. N. Revathy, T. E. Raja Simhan)