NEW DELHI: India's brightest fresh engineers seem to be giving more weight to the quality of job profile than to pay packages, going by the ongoing campus placements on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).In a first, four out of every 10 offers made and accepted in IIT placements so far this year are from the core sector, even as job offers from startups , consulting and other sectors dropped slightly from last year.Core sectors ­ which include public sector units and companies in space of research & development (across all sectors), manufacturing, electronics, automobiles, steel, etc­ emerged a surprise favourite at leading IIT campuses including Madras, Delhi, Guwahati, Kharagpur and Roorkee, despite lower annual packages of Rs 8-20 lakh against Rs 20 lakh to more than Rs 1 crore that consulting and tech majors offer. Core companies accounted for almost 40% of the total offers received so far at these IITs. The placement season is still on and more core companies are lined up at all IITs. “This is the first time, that core contributes the highest to the total offers so far," a placement officer at IIT Delhi said.Last year, IT sector was the top recruiter at IIT Delhi and Bombay with 26% and 27% offers, respectively, while core sector was close behind with about 25% offers.Officials said emphasis this year is more on quality of offers than the packages across campuses.“Our focus is to provide core as the first choice rather than companies (non-core) with hefty offers,“ said IIT Kharagpur's placement chairperson Debashis Deb. With the ban on PSUs and government organisations hiring from campuses lifted, all IITs had put in efforts to attract such firms. The result has been rewarding.IIT Madras, where placements were initially disrupted due to the deluge and the demise of chief minister Jayalalithaa, has had four PSUs making 25 offers so far, up from just 15 PSU offers throughout the last placement season. “Core placements are 43% of the total placements done so far. This is so far the highest in recent years,“ said Manu Santhanam, training & placement advisor at IIT Madras. NP Padhy, professor-in-charge of placements at IIT Roorkee, said, “We have had the best placement ever with most offers (40%) coming from core.“ He said the strategy of giving early slots to core companies has clicked.Top core sector recruiters include Tata Steel, JSW Ste el, Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Coal India, Bharat Dynamics, Bharat Electronics Limited, Indian Navy, ONGC, TVS Motor, Eaton Corporation, and Texas Instruments.Domestic core sector companies offer salaries of Rs 8-15 lakh while in core MNCs the salaries can go up to Rs 25 lakh.At IIT Guwahati, Bharat Electronics and Bharat Dynamics visited the campus in the first phase. The institute is expecting at least half a dozen more core sector recruiters to participate in the second phase of placements beginning January. “This year, we are heavily focused on the core sector,“ IIT Guwahati's placement head Kaustabh Mohanty said.