Hiring in bulk is back on campuses with leading information technology (IT) companies Infosys, Wipro, Accenture and Cognizant recruiting in four digits, and making multiple offers to one student in some cases. In certain cases, in a bid to place more students, engineering institutes have done away with reserving Day One slot for a specific IT company and are inviting more than one company on campuses for recruitment. In this numbers game, 4,000 job offers were made on the first day of the recruitment at Chennai-based SRM University, of which 3,700 were from three IT majors — Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant. While Cognizant handed over 1,502 job offers, Infosys and Wipro issued 1,105 and 1,082 offers, respectively, on the first day. “The current year was better than last year in terms of placements, and around 100 companies are expected to visit the campus in engineering section alone,’ said S Ganapathy, dean (placement cell) at SRM University. Works Applications Company, a Japanese firm, has offered the highest salary of Rs 33 lakh to a SRM University student. Last year, too, the same company had offered Rs 33 lakh to a student. At another Chennai-based institute — The Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) — a total of 5,828 job offers were made to 4,000-plus students by four companies - Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro Technology and Accenture - in a single slot of recruitment drive that started on September 1. The Institute said 3,200 students have been placed till now against 2,600 students last year. Code Nation, a Bangalore-based firm, offered the highest package of Rs 24 lakh a year, while the average salary has been Rs 4.5 lakh a year. VIT’s chancellor G Viswanathan said contrary to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom)’s employability statistics, which stated that only 20 per cent of engineering graduates were employable, VIT has placed 90-95 per cent of its students every year. Sekar Viswanathan, vice-president, VIT, noted that students from B Tech, M Tech, M S (software engineering), MCA, MSc (computer science), and MSc (electronics) were placed as part of the recruitment drive this year. Samuel Raj Kumar, director (placements) at VIT, said in the first phase, starting from July till now, 95 companies have visited the institute compared to 60-65 last year. While the IT services companies’ packages did not see any increase, IT product, automobile, core engineering firms offered 20 per cent higher than what they had offered last year. VIT offered Slot-1 (Day One) to Accenture, Cognizant, Wipro and Infosys. Wipro hired 1,141 students, Accenture 1,324, Infosys 1,452 and Cognizant 1,911. The total of 5,828 offers surpasses last year’s total of 3,934 offers. Cognizant has surpassed its own record at VIT, beating its previous highest of 1,820 offers. Sriram Rajagopal, vice-president (human resources) at Cognizant, said: “We continue to hire the best and the brightest talent globally in order to meet business demand across many of our service lines, and continue to invest in growth. Notably, during the June-ended quarter of 2014, we accelerated our recruitment with 7,200 net hires globally - the strongest hiring we have experienced in any quarter during the past two-and-a-half years.” Other companies that recruited from VIT include eBay, DeShaw and Flipkart, which recruited 15 students with a salary package of around Rs 15 lakh a year. Code Nation, which has offered the highest package so far, recruited one student.

Deloitte (67), Schneider Electric (31) are among other recruiters. The campus recruitments for 2015 graduating batch started with the MTech internship placements on June 17 with Intel recruiting 38 students. Companies that recruited M. Tech students for internships included NetApp, GE, VmWare, Cummins, Trimble, Altiux, Continental, Ingersoll Rand, Robert & Bosch, Alcatel Lucent, DEP, Athena Health. Two-hundred and thirty-five students have been recruited for internships. Core Engineering companies such as Maruti, ITC, L&T Constructions, and Ford will be conducting the recruitment drive, which will start in January and go till April. According to sources, SRM has changed its pattern of providing one exclusive day for the IT majors and has, instead, invited several IT companies on the same day in a bid to place more students. Last year, the Day One slot was exclusive for Tata Consultancy Services, which offered 1,154 jobs. Sources said on condition of anonymity that TCS might not be interested in day sharing model of recruitment. The expectations of the companies that visit the institution for recruitment are high. Companies are evaluating students on their idea of the company's expectations and exposure on social mobility and cloud. At Mumbai-based VJTI, Accenture, IBM, and Infosys will shortly visit to make job offers in bulk. VJTI has so far seen Japanese company Rakuten picking up students and making the highest offer at Rs 40 lakh a year. Another Japanese company, IBJ Group, has offered three students a pay package of Rs 20 lakh each. “Students wanted to join dream companies. We are focusing on them. We will also have mass recruiters on the campus in a few days,” said a placement official at VJTI. The institute has around 500 students to be placed this year. Institutes in Pune have also seen the placement numbers surge this year compared to last year. Nearly 700 out of 900 students in the College of Engineering, Pune, have already been placed. Last year, the figure was less than 400.

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