IT recruiters swarm campuses

Updated on: Wednesday, October 12, 2011

As the magnitude for qualified human resource in IT and ITES continues to increase despite speculation of a recession just around the corner, the IT majors are on a binge recruitment drive. At SRM University, TCS recruited 1,214 students, Accenture signed up 849 and Wipro another 273. At every other private university in Tamil Nadu like Amrita, VIT or Sastra, the top notch IT companies are recruiting en masse. The pattern is similar in top government-aided and self-financing colleges where hundreds of students are offered IT jobs.

This year, Cognizant alone has hired 7,122 anew till now. Hiring thousands of students from a campus across various domains has become a norm. Be it a student of Chemical engineering, Biotechnology or Mechanical, the final destination seems to be an IT company.

For Chemical engineering student M.S. Maheswari, it was easy to shift streams to take up a job at an IT firm. “Being a student of computer science or chemical engineering does not make any difference, since all the recruits are trained from the basics. I joined this industry to gain work experience before I go for higher studies,” she says.

More than 80 per cent of students who are offered the jobs accept them, say placement officers. Most students when they choose the various engineering streams are not aware of what they are in for. It is often during the final-year they understand about the opportunities and future prospects in that field and end up taking jobs in the IT industry, placement officers say. Awareness about the course needs to be created even before students join engineering, though it cannot be denied that IT is the largest job provider.

Of late, the industry is ensuring that what is offered comes closer to what students study for four years at college. “The IT sector which hires students from all streams has also started offering students a profile where they can apply the domain knowledge they have. Companies are working with the machine designing industry where mechanical engineering students are hired and with the health science sector where biotechnology graduates can be employed,” says S. Ganapathy, Dean, SRM Placements.

Some universities try and balance between bulk recruiters and also allow students to exercise their options across companies. The IT industry is feeling the need to recruit more as many students prefer a career in their subjects of specialisation. “Students are increasingly opting for core companies,” says Kala Vijaykumar, chairperson, SSN College of Engineering.

Companies also decide on the colleges they need to recruit from based on a number of factors. “We identify campuses on our accredited list. These will depend on the quality of faculty, the facilities and infrastructure and the overall track record of the institution. We have about 175 engineering colleges on our accredited list from where we do our regular on-campus recruitment,” says V. Viswanathan, Senior Manager, HR, Wipro Technologies.

As thousands get chosen from one campus there are some others left behind. Students from Tier I and II colleges wait for that one off-campus recruitment to grab the job on offer. “In the college rankings brought out recently some of the Tier 2 and 3 colleges were among the top 15 institutions. The best in Tier 2 and 3 colleges are often good and sometimes even better than the weakest students from Tier-I colleges,” says B. Anbuthambi, General Manager- Corporate and Government initiatives, ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu.

Companies look out for such students too, since they are more committed and would stay on the job longer. “But often they do not have as many opportunities as students from the city colleges. One of the IT majors plans to hold a national-level entrance test from this year. If all the recruiters take up such an initiative, all the graduates will have an equal platform to prove themselves,” says Mr. Anbuthambi.

IT recruiters swarm campuses

More Education news