KOCHI: Here's some good news amid the economic slowdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. The new campus placement season, which kicked off this month, augurs well for the fresh graduates of the state’s premier engineering institutes.
The placements, held through online tests and interviews currently, are seeing blue-chip corporations such as Amazon, Cisco, Oracle and Goldman Sachs hiring fresh engineering grads from NIT-Calicut, the College of Engineering Trivandrum (CET), Cusat School of Engineering and others.
The students have been offered salary packages in the range of Rs 20 lakh/annum to Rs 44 lakh/annum. This is almost as good as last year, said placement officers in the colleges.
Some of the fresh BTech grads have pocketed Rs 50 lakh as CTC (Cost to the Company).Computer Science, Electrical & Communication, and Electrical Engineering are once again the most sought-after streams, like in recent years.
“Compared to 2019-20, 2020-21 is seeing only a slight dip in the number of candidates recruited,” said NIT Calicut training & placements head Sameer S M.“This time, more students are likely to receive internship offers so that companies will get more time to decide on their selection after observing their performance for two months in the summer of 2021 for final deployment on the field in 2022,” Sameer added.
‘Amazon, Oracle among recruiters’
Cusat placement officer Jacob Elias said engineering students from its School of Engineering have been offered as high as Rs 17 lakh CTC. “In the 2020 season, the highest CTC obtained was Rs 24 lakh and nearly 595 students had been placed. However, for 2021, we have seen a decrease in the number of recruits being chosen by the companies even though there has been no dip in the pay packets offered,” he said.
Model Engineering College, Ernakulam, placement coordinator Ananya Nair conveyed the same. “We’re yet to wind up the 2020 placement and already 70 per cent of the students have been placed, with Rs 33 lakh offered by Amazon topping the CTCs,” she said.
CET Thiruvananthapuram placement officer Sunil Kumar said the students who were selected by the companies are yet to be taken on board.
“The companies are yet to release the number of candidates they will need for 2021. Due to the Covid scenario, uncertainty is writ large and companies are yet to notify the institutions,” he said.Sameer said it seems the companies are reserving the students for 2022.
“The companies believe the situation may improve by then,” he said, adding the positive thing to notice is that there has not been any drastic dip in the CTCs.“For the 2021 placements, some of our students have been offered as much as Rs 44 lakh. The range is from Rs 20 lakh and Rs 44 lakh,” he said. Actually, the software companies are the ones returning to hire fresh graduates, said Sameer.
According to him, due to Covid-related uncertainties, examinations for the last semester were delayed. “Accordingly, the placement season, which used to start in the first week of August, began only on September 10. But lots of companies such as Amazon, CISCO, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, DE Shaw, Arcesium, SAP and ExxonMobil have already confirmed their campus visit dates,” Sameer added.
“As many as 60 students have already received pre-placement offers (PPO) from top recruiters in the country based on the summer internship, which was done in virtual mode due to Covid, during June-July this year,” said Sameer.
“As far as software companies are concerned, there’s no sign of a decline in opportunities or business whereas core companies are waiting for more clarity on the post-Covid scenario,” he added.