If you are an engineering graduate on the lookout for an on-campus job placement offer, then here are terrible tidings.
Placement offers extended to students at one of the premier technical educational universities of the State, Anna University, has registered a marked decrease this year.
University officials state that the government shutdown in the US that has singed markets worldwide, may be to blame as a majority of the companies coming here for recruitments have tightened their purse-strings and are extending offers to fewer students.
Confirming the same, Director of Centre for University Industry Collaboration at the varsity, Dr T Thyagarajan, concedes that the outlook on placements has been a tad grim as compared to last year. “The placement scenario this year has been sluggish, thanks to the government shutdown in the US, which has had repercussions across the globe. Companies have largely shied away from recruiting in large numbers,” he says.
This, despite the fact that the number of companies visiting the campus for recruitments remaining steady.
The numbers speak for themselves.
According to data available on the varsity’s website, a total of 1,717 students, from both BE and ME streams from the College of Engineering Guindy, Madras Institute of Technology and A C College of Technology, landed job offers in 2012-13.
However, as on Thursday, in the first two-and-half months ever since the placement season began this year, 42 companies have visited the campus, extending job offers to about 674 final-year students, with 30 per cent of them being post-graduate students.
The companies, he adds, have been visiting Anna University due to the fact that they would not want to burn bridges with them.
It may be noted that early this year university officials had reportedly said that the companies had expressed their intention to cut down on recruitment.
Pay packages of the job offers have ranged from `3.5 lakh to `16 lakh.
“Since the placement season is expected to go on till February next, we hope to exceed last year’s figure of job offers to students. The students are also being offered training on soft-skills and communicative skills in order to help them face job interviews better,” he added.