In a shift away from campus

Students of Information Technology in various colleges are set to suffer a big blow to their employment avenues. IT companies, which were recruiting thousands of students from the campus till recently, have indicated that they will be hiring lesser number of students during placement drives this year.

The focus will be on off-campus hiring, putting those students who wish to get placed during the last leg of graduation itself, to a disadvantage.

Last year, India’s IT companies hired around 1.5 lakh students from campus placement drives. The 2011 report of Delhi University Campus Placement Cell shows that BSc. Hons Computer Science students got the fifth highest number of placements among all the courses offered by DU. BCom Hons, BA Hons Economics, BA Hons English and BCom Programme were the only courses ahead of Computer Science.

This year though, IT companies have cited various reasons for moving away from on-campus recruitment.

The first being that they have to wait a long time – six months, between interviews and final results to come out, to hire students finally.

Secondly, with the IT industry still reeling under the effects of the economic slowdown, companies want to hire on need basis, and not in bulk once in a year.

Lastly, a lot of second-rung companies are going for off-campus placements as the best minds are whisked away by the bigger companies during placement drives.

IT students are experiencing this change in the hiring pattern already. Manisha Bisht, who graduated in Computer Science from Bhaska­r­a­charya College of Applied Scie­nces this year informs, “In March this year, the last sem­e­s­ter of my course, HCL app­r­oached my college for hiring. 30 of us were taken to a college in Panipat and interviewed the whole day. In the end, I was the only one selected and told that I should get back to them when my results are out – six months after. Due to some miscommunication during this time, I couldn’t contact them and went for off-campus interviews of other companies. Today, I am happily placed in IBM.”

Some IT professionals, however, cite other reasons for this disinclination for on-campus hiring. Mayank Mule, who works with an IT company says, “Hiring experienced workers, rather than freshers, saves these companies a lot of training cost.

“Besides, many a time the course content of these colleges does not match the industry requirements. Hired students sometimes start feeling that they are not suited to this industry and leave midway leading to high attrition rate and loss to company. Hiring experienced workers makes more sense as they know if they want to stay in the IT industry, are skilled, disciplined and bring work cultures from various companies to that organisation. No wonder they now want to lessen on-campus hiring.”

Pratibha Shukla, another IT professional adds, “College students should not be disheartened. If you are talented, you will be taken during off-campus recruitment drives as well. You just need to keep updating your knowledge and stay confident.” Most IT students may not find consolation in this thought, though.