The Hindu Business Line : Me first

This data was chanced upon while flipping through an engineering college brochure. It indicates companies that came on ‘Day one’ and ‘Day two’ of campus recruitment and, consequently, hired the most number of students that year.

To colleges it does not matter which company is first on campus, as long as students benefit. But for the recruiters, Day One is a prime slot. Industry insiders often say “it (campus placement) is a fight without a finish.”

e-World spoke to some top hirers and campus placement officers to understand the dynamics involved.

“Day-one slot is of primary importance for us. You can attract the best talent from among the vast pool of applicants (about 3,000). Also, the first impression (of the company on campus) counts and lasts the longest,” says Rosita Rabindra, Executive Vice-President and Head of Human Resources, NIIT Technologies. About 70 per cent of NIIT’s recruitments in the past three years happened on ‘Day one’.

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Bikramjit Maitra, Vice-President and Head, Human Resources, Infosys Technologies believes the ‘Day one’ slot gives the company access to better quality of talent. Of the about 700 colleges Infosys has hired from so far, it bagged the ‘Day one’ slot 80 per cent of the time.

Wipro’s Campus Hiring Head Priti Rajora says experience shows best quality intake happens on ‘Day one’ and Wipro has bagged that slot in 65 per cent of the institutes it visited.

Communications software developer Aricent finds the ‘dream job’ slot as beneficial as ‘Day one’. These slots are usually given to specialist companies and not mass hirers. “About 70 per cent of our hiring happens through the ‘dream job’ slot; we get people who sincerely desire to do high-end technology work in communications software,” says Indrajit Sen, Director, Talent Acquisition, Aricent.

D.K. Srivastava, Head of Corporate Human Resources, HCL Technologies says ‘dream job’ slots help students choose and work in their area of interest. HCL recruits mainly through this slot and 90 per cent of its job offers have been taken up.

Student interface

Kalpana Jaishankar, Vice-President - People Development and Human Resources Operations, Patni Computer Systems, says the company does not vie for ‘Day one’ slots but hires students on the basis of their capabilities. Its interaction with the colleges begins much ahead of campus recruitments

“We encourage students to do project training with us and sponsor some technical events where we interact with them on a one-on-one basis,” she says. During campus recruitment, alumnus from the respective colleges accompany the recruiters to help instil confidence among the students.

Cognizant Technology Solutions has a formal recruitment programme that brings together principals, deans and placement directors from over 150 campuses. “We discuss collaboration opportunities in areas such as curriculum development, employability enhancement and faculty-industry linkage programmes,” says Bhaskar Das, Vice-President, Human Resources, Cognizant. In 2006-07, Tata Consultancy Services bagged ‘Day one’ slots in 91 per cent of the colleges it visited; up to June 30 this year, the figure rose to 97 per cent. At Anna University, 1,006 offers were made after screening about 1,800 candidates and at Vellore Institute of Technology, 780 offers (about 60 per cent of total student strength) — both in ‘Day one’ slots.

A company spokesperson says TCS has conceptualised, designed, delivered and certified certain elective programmes at colleges such as Anna University and IIT Madras. Students opting for these programmes are likely to be preferred over others during hiring. TCS also admits interns for 3-6 months on a monthly stipend of Rs 7,000- Rs 10,000.

Other initiatives include the Visiting Professorship Scheme (where academicians conduct courses for TCS employees), sabbatical for college professors to work in TCS for some time and instituting student awards.

Infosys undertakes similar initiatives besides facilitating guest lectures and alumni interaction, while Wipro conducts student workshops that include soft-skills improvement and sponsors technical scholarships.

Limited interaction

However, despite these efforts students have accepted only 70-80 per cent of the job offers. Why is this so?

Talking to some campus placement officers, the impression gained is that the efforts made by companies to attract students may not be enough. Guest lectures are organised once a month or so and is common for faculty and students. On most occasions the topics are too advanced for the average student. As for summer training, the opportunities are few in number.

“All this industry exposure helps students prepare for their interviews (basically talk smartly). It does not help them choose which company to join,” said a placement officer of a top university in Chennai. So, what is the deciding factor for students? “Service-level agreements (or bonds). Most students do not want to sign any or will settle for companies with the least time-frame of service agreement,” he says.

The low hiring numbers may also be attributed to geographical limitations. For instance, Wipro, Infosys and Satyam Computers are all South-based companies and hire substantially from this region. NIIT Technologies, Aricent (both New Delhi-based) and Patni (Mumbai-based) again hire predominantly from their respective regions.

TCS (Mumbai-based) and HCL Technologies (New Delhi-based) are exceptions which goes to show that it may be best to look farther for new talent.

Satyam this year is increasing its intake from north, west and east India, said a spokesperson. Chennai-based SSN College of Engineering, associated with the HCL Group, is planning to open a campus at Noida this year to try and bridge the campus placement gap between north and south India, sources said.

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