IIT placements: After a dull Phase 1, focus turns to getting more recruiters

Bengaluru | New Delhi: The placement war rooms of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are working overtime to come up with strategies to attract more job offers as the engineering colleges enter the second phase of placements. After the first phase that ended in December at the old IITs, the number of students from the Class of 2024 who landed a job was 15-20% lower compared with a year earlier.

With companies across sectors — led by technology products and services — slashing hiring numbers, IITs are exploring all avenues to ensure that as many students as possible graduate with a job. Meanwhile, some students who are yet to get placed have been applying to off-campus jobs since last month, to have a backup in hand should on-campus offers not come through, students at top IITs told ET.

The institutes, which had already expanded their recruiter list, are now reaching out to even more companies through alumni, venture capitalists and social networking platforms like LinkedIn. Startups and public sector organisations are among those being tapped, placement officials said.


“Our target for the second phase is to reach out to as many companies as we can … we are not limiting ourselves with numbers,” said Rajib Maity, chairperson of the Career Development Centre at IIT-Kharagpur. “We are already in touch with companies to understand their set of requirements and whether they can find a match among our students.”

IIT-BHU has chalked out its own gameplan for Phase-II of placements. “We are planning to increase the spectrum of companies by plunging into the PSU and startup sector to maximise the number of offers,” said Sushant K Shrivastava, coordinator of its training and placement cell.

Some of the old IITs told ET that they would be tapping companies already engaged with them for research and development work.

“Startups are being given priority, while big companies are also being pushed for bigger hiring numbers,” said a student in the placement cell of IIT-Bombay.

It’s been one of the toughest years for placements across IITs and the impact on jobs has been felt across institutes. At IIT-Bombay, 1,188 students were placed in the first phase (20 days), as against 1431 in 16 days for the Class of 2023; at IIT Kanpur, 913 students were placed in the first phase compared with 1,128 in the previous batch.

Several IITs are not revealing their strategies yet as they are facing stiff competition in getting adequate recruiters and job offers for students.

“We are putting our best efforts for the recruitment process with the different available resources so that all our students get the best of job offers,” said R Ayothiraman, professor-in-charge of IIT-Delhi’s Office of Career Services.

A placement source at another leading IIT said the situation is bad. Several students from his institute did not return home after the first phase as they were focused on applying for off-campus jobs. If students get offers from outside the campus, they are still eligible for on-campus placements.

The student said some off-campus recruiters may even take advantage of the situation to lowball students. “We are likely to see a greater proportion of students than last year end up with lower-paying jobs as those who settle for off-campus options may get jobs paying as low as Rs 3-4 lakh.”

Placements at old IITs of Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Madras, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Guwahati and Varanasi (BHU) start in December, before heading into a break. The second phase starts in January and continues till April-May.