CHENNAI: For the second consecutive year, nature and other unforeseen events seem to have crippled job prospects of students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)- Madras.
Only 672 students out of 1,297 who registered themselves for this December placement season, got successfully placed in companies. Besides this, 57 students had already accepted pre-placement offers. The floods last year literally made the IIT campus non-accessible for recruiters. However, 725 students got placed and 216 companies made 872 job offers to students. But this year, it has further come down to 672 students getting placements. Totally, 833 offers were made from 176 companies. This is the lowest placement during December placement season for IIT-M in the last at least five years (see table).
The IIT placement officials said the situation was due to the sudden death of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and cyclone Vardah that hit the city subsequently. The disruption of networks also made it impossible for companies to conduct interviews through Skype orsimilar online chatting platforms.
The season that commenced on December 1, had a rollicking start with over 500 students getting placed by December 5. However, things started to fall apart with the death of Jayalalithaa on December 5 night, which forced the authorities to cancel the placements on December 6 and 7. Though attempts were made to reschedule the lost sessions, severe cyclonic storm Vardah has washed out the last two days of business as well on December 12 and 13 leaving students and the IIT authorities high and dry, a student coordinator of placements told Express.
Officials say that had there been no loss of four working days during the season, at least 250 students would have got placed. About 25-30 companies could not attend the placement season because of the loss of four days. Manu Santhanam, Advisor (Training & Placement), said the students need not be disheartened, as “Second phase of placement season will commence in January second week and already seven companies have lined-up.”