‘Not a time to be picky’: Dismal placements have left BTechs scrambling for off-campus jobs at low salaries

NEW DELHI: Earlier this month, a job posting by information technology company Cognizant invited backlash online. It announced recruitment of fresh graduates at an annual salary of Rs 2.5 lakh. As many pointed out, that would barely cover rent. While Cognizant later walked back the announcement and claimed the posting wasn’t for technology or IT jobs, it drew attention to a problem engineering colleges and BTech graduates are facing with engineering jobs and salaries.

The mass recruitment notice came on the back of a very difficult campus placement season at engineering colleges across the country. Careers360 has covered how even the Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology struggled to place the BTech batch graduating in 2024. Both placement rates and salaries declined across branches, including computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering. Some companies have opted to limit visits to campuses and recruit off-campus, a growing trend since the pandemic.

“Due to the decrease in the number of companies visiting [for] on-campus placements, students had to look off-campus,” said a student member of IIT Delhi’s placement cell.

Shailesh M Pandey, training and placement officer, NIT Patna, agreed. “There is an increase in off-campus recruitments this year due to recession and fewer companies coming on-campus.”

But securing off-campus jobs is harder and leaves students, now without the support of the institution and its placement cell, in a poorer negotiating position with regard to salaries. Those can vary widely between on and off-campus hiring.

“For bigger companies, the salary ranges do not differ, but for mid-level or small companies, their packages are quite different. For instance, these companies coming on campus were offering Rs 5 lakh per annum to Rs 6 lakh per annum and for off-campus, they only offered Rs 2.5 lakh per annum to Rs 3 lakh per annum,” said Nisha Singh, training and placement coordinator, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi.

BTech Jobs: Off-campus placements, low salaries

As placement officials noted, major recruiters like Infosys, Accenture, Capgemini, and Genpact stayed away from many campuses. But that does not mean they did not hire.

A cloud data management company that did not participate in Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Allahabad’s on-campus job drive hired five graduates off-campus, said faculty-in-charge Muneendra Ojha. An IT giant recruited another five off-campuses.

Students as well as institutions prefer campus placements. But the tepid response in the winter of 2023 meant the placement season dragged on till the middle of 2024, and even then many were without jobs or had accepted offers well below expectations.

“Throughout February, companies came for interviews. Normally, in this period there are fewer companies that come on-campus but this time the campus placement cell went above and beyond to get them,” said an IIT Delhi placement cell member. “Since it was known that off-campus placements are tough, many made it a point to revise whatever they learnt from their preferred fields or started to learn programming so they could apply for a wider variety of jobs. This wasn't the time to be picky.”

A student from IIT Roorkee agreed. “Students start looking for off campus placements mostly after February or March, and these are mostly those who don’t get placed, which could be 30-40% of the population. Many with not-so-good placement offers look for off-campus too, but this segment is not too large.”

Ojha at IIIT Allahabad noted the same trend. “With low placement numbers from previous years, students are jumping companies very quickly to get better salaries,” he said.

Securing off-campus jobs

Landing off-campus jobs is always more challenging but this year is proving to be exceptionally difficult with many from even top colleges in the fray.

“Off-campus is highly competitive compared to on-campus placements. But there is a trend [of off-campus hiring] which has started from Covid times,” observed Dinesh Babu Jayagopi, faculty-in-charge of placement and internship, International Institute of Information and Technology (IIIT) Bangalore.

The IIT Delhi student added: “During off-campus hiring, every job posting had people from top colleges looking for placement. It was more competitive. But students had no choice but to keep trying.”

More opportunities

However, Amit Chopra, director placements, Guru Nanak Dev University, had a different view. “There are thousands of engineering colleges and companies cannot visit all of them. This is one way through which they can look into every nook and corner of the country,” he said.

Instead of hiring aligned with academic and graduating schedules, recruiters went for “just-in-time hiring”, argued Chopra. “ Due to the economic recession, companies were cautious this season. However, now they have gone for “just-in-time hiring” when companies saw a need in projects, numbers and business requirements were clear, they preferred to hire only then.

As earlier reported, Infosys, TCS and Wipro, saw headcounts decrease during the entire placement period.

Krishna Vij, business head, TeamLease Digital, agreed. “Companies are preferring immediate hiring over incurring bench costs or risking the ability to honour offers,” she said. “Companies are accessing a broader range of talent, prioritising skills, aptitude and real-world experience over traditional academic credentials.”

In consequence, hiring increased in June, July and August of 2024, said Chopra, but added that requirements were smaller and through less formal announcements were made online, often via social media.

Also, there were no guarantees from even the ones that did recruit from campuses. “Many companies don't have an idea when they would require new joinees and often hire and keep delaying their onboarding, pushing students for other roles,” stated Annapa, chairman, career development centre, NITK Surathkal.