R and D, Core Engineering Jobs a Big Draw at IIT-M Placements

CHENNAI:  The second round of placements that began Wednesday in IIT-Madras saw a considerable increase in offers for core engineering jobs including research and development. The total number of students placed on Wednesday and Thursday was 220 with companies like Flipkart, Coal India and Qualcomm evincing interest among students.

“There is a huge climb this year in the number of students being placed in core-engineering jobs. We have never had these many students sitting for R&D and electrical engineering jobs before,” said Professor Babu Vishwanathan, Placements Coordinator at IIT-Madras.

Companies like Coal India were expected to touch at least 20 offers in the afternoon session on Thursday that went on till 11.30 pm. Companies like Qualcomm and MSCI also took a clutch of students on-board (14 and 11 respectively) for R&D profiles. There were also a significant number of takers for Companies like CISCO, Flipkart, Airbus and Intel (32 totally). Each session individually saw nearly 20 to 25 companies recruiting for as many as 30 to 35 different profiles.

“We did make a concerted effort to get more students into core engineering jobs, by advancing the interview day for these companies. But even from the side of the companies and students, there is considerably more interest towards these job profiles as well,” added Professor Vishwanathan.

The rain-stalled placements that kicked off on January 6, witnessed a large number of students gravitating toward start-ups like Flipkart, Swiggy and UrbanLadder. Mercedes, Fuji, ICICI and Sandisk were other prominent names present on the first two days. Day 3, Friday will see companies like Ashok Leyland coming in to recruit.

IIT-M has also announced that no mention of salary packages will be announced from this year onwards.