The sweet spot for campus hires for IT services companies this year is likely to be the Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns with one-fifth of the total fresh hires expected to be sourced from these towns.

According to Mr Amit Bansal, CEO and Co-founder, Purple Leap, more than 20 per cent of the fresher hiring that happens in the June-September period is likely to come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges this year, in view of the boom in the job market. “Almost 35,000-40,000 jobs will be filled by colleges that are beyond the top 150 campuses from across the country,” he said.

Purple Leap works towards building professional skills among students gearing up for their first jobs. It has tie-ups with companies to provide hiring and training services. Mr Bansal says, this year, they are broadening their base of Tier 2 colleges where they provide employability training to colleges from 120 to 240, with about 25 of these colleges located in Karnataka. The company plans to touch base with at least 75,000 engineering students this year for its employability programme.

Mr Murlidhar S, CEO of testing and assessment company MeritTrac, says that Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies also are getting proactive in the student hiring process. For instance, colleges located in Bhuvaneshwar or Raipur, Hubli, network with one another and create a pooled campus for assessment and hiring purpose. “The placement officers of 20-25 colleges come together and create a common recruitment location so that companies have access to 10,000 students at one go,” he says.

Currently, Indian engineering colleges supply almost 12 per cent of the total engineering workforce with almost 66 per cent of this talent coming out of Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges. Student exposure here to the skill sets demanded by global tech and IT industry is minimal, says Mr Bansal. Therefore, companies have been forced to lower their benchmarks to hire students, resulting in longer training programmes once they are onboard, he adds.

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