NEW DELHI: WITH the annual placement season about to start in a few weeks, the country's premier technology institutes, namely the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are hoping for even better prospects this year, especially as most of them have been flooded with a higher number of pre-placement offers (PPOs) as compared to last year.
The first phase of placement at the IITs takes place in the first two weeks of December every year.
“Students are being individually approached with jobs until placement officially begins on campus. Students decide to either accept the offers or wait for something better through the official placements. It is their choice,” an official from the IIT-Bombay placement cell said.
IIT-Madras received 130 pre-placement offers this year as compared to 114 last year , a jump of 14 per cent. The Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, which coordinates its own internships and placements, has also recorded an increase in PPOs during 2018-19.
“The good number of PPOs is hopefully indicative of a strong placement season. The steady increase over the years in PPOs also points to the value placed by recruiters on the internship program,” said a senior official in training and placement cell at the Institute.
Most PPOs this year have been from sectors such as research and development, analytics, consulting and finance and fast-moving consumer goods.
“Many companies tend to wait till the campus interviews to share their final offer. However, over the last few years, PPOs are a rising trend, and the number of students accepting PPOs has also increased,” said an official from the IIT-Delhi placement cell. She also said, like every year, many offers have also come from the information technology sector.
Last year, IIT-D had received 180 PPOs, of which, 91 offers were accepted. This year, the institute has already received 151 offers and many more are still in the pipeline. “Over the next month, these figures will change, and the final count will definitely be higher as compared to 2017,” added the IIT-D placement official.
Officials at various IITs also said that the institutes were hoping to get up to 10 per cent increase in placement offers this year. Last year, several students from IIT Delhi and Kanpur had hit the headlines for receiving packages of over a crore per year.