The Hindu Business Line : Campus hiring: IT majors keeping off IITs?

Though the placement season at IITM has not yet concluded, institute officials expect a 15 per cent dip in freshers being placed in IT companies this year.

Adith Charlie

Mumbai, Feb. 10 Indian IT firms seem to be going slow on hiring from IITs, the premier engineering institutions in the country.

Several top software exporters are restricting themselves to fewer IITs in the country, and for only niche skill sets.

“Wipro and Infosys said that they will not approach us this year as there is a freeze on campus hiring internally,” said Mr Amit Garg, academic affairs secretary, IIT Madras. TCS hired only 2-3 persons this year from IIT Madras, specifically for Corporate Technology Office, against about 20 persons hired last year, said another official with IIT Madras. A spokesperson for TCS said that the company had visited all the IITs in the country this year, except for IIT in Mumbai. (TCS had made more than 24,000 engineering campus offers for 2008-09.)

An e-mail query sent to Infosys Technologies on the same remained unanswered. (Infosys had made about 18,000 campus offers for 2008-09; and 20,000 offers for 2009-10.)

Mr Pradeep Bahirwani, VP-Talent Acquisition, Wipro Technologies, said: “Specific to IITs, our recruitment even in the earlier years is not significant as many of them prefer to either pursue higher studies or look for a role in a multi-national company.”

In 2008, about 150 students from IIT Madras had joined IT companies.

Though the placement season at IITM has not yet concluded, IITM officials expect a 15 per cent dip in freshers being placed in IT companies this year.

The technology majors – Wipro, Satyam, MindTree, Sasken, Accenture, and GlobalLogic – that visited IIT-Guwahati last year (2007-2008), did not visit the campus for recruitment this year, according to Dr Debabrata Chakraborty, Faculty In-Charge, Training & Placement.

“Some of them said they might visit at a later date. This comparison could be better done by the end of April because some more companies might visit by that time,” Dr Chakraborty said.

A senior official with IIT Delhi said on condition of anonymity that HCL, Wipro, Satyam and Mindtree have not yet visited the institution this year.

Last year about 160 students from the campus were placed with various IT companies, the official added.

A spokesperson for HCL said: “HCL Tech as a policy does not share details regarding specific educational institutes.”

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