The Hindu Business Line : Campus hiring lacks vigour

Coimbatore, Jan. 4 Engineering institutions in and around Coimbatore admit to a slowdown in campus hiring. “There is a slowdown, but we cannot say placements are bad,” a placement officer of one of the colleges, preferring anonymity, said.

Sources say there has been at least a 15 to 20 per cent drop in the number of IT companies that visited the various campuses for hiring this year compared to the last.

While around 60 per cent of the eligible students of the 2009 batch have just about managed an offer from some company or the other, the fate of the students who are expected to pass out in May 2010 ‘remains uncertain’, say college sources.

The worst in the IT job market, it appears, is yet to come.

Placement officers, meanwhile, are working overtime to get IT companies to visit their campus, invite core engineering companies to hire students, search the headhunt columns and identify new companies that look to hire technical talent. “It is not easy,” they say.

Job fairs, which used to attract thousands of job seekers from in and around the region, are now in the past. The fervour appears to have gone, with companies drastically cutting down the hiring numbers.

The number of combined recruitment initiatives have also fallen from 15 to 20 two years ago to less than six at present. Such initiatives used to happen in a big way earlier. Now, select companies, it is learnt, inform the institutions about their hiring intentions and request the concerned institution to identify potential candidates for the combined recruitment drive.

In waiting

The concern is not just about the slowdown on the recruitment front. Placement officers say that a good number of the 2008 batch students are still waiting for a call letter from their prospective employers.

“They are releasing the letter in batches, but the delay is turning out to be an anxious wait for the student, parents and the institution,” the source said.

About 10,000-15,000 freshers (from this region) are picked off to campus every year by various IT companies. In view of the slowdown in the IT job market, a good number of them would probably look for jobs in the specific area in which they pursued their studies.

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