IIT placements end on a high: Job offers up by 40-45%, average salaries higher

The pandemic pushed several sectors towards digitisation at a faster rate and hiring experts have touted this as one of the main reasons for increase in hiring of fresh talent, especially in the technology industry.

The first phase of placements across the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) ended last week and most IITs have recorded a 40-45% increase in job offers received this year compared to last.

In most cases, the total job offers received are higher than pre-pandemic years as well. At IIT Bombay, the first phase of placements ended on December 15 with 1,723 jobs offered to the batch. This is nearly 42% higher than 1,128 jobs offers made last year and nearly 26.5% higher than job offers received in 2019.

“This is an all-time high record of number of offers in Phase-I of Placements at IIT Bombay. We are expecting some more offers in the coming days. Of the 1,723 offers received, 1,382 jobs have been accepted,” said a spokesperson for the placement cell of the institute. The highest salary for an international post offered to a student of IIT Bombay stands at USD 2.87 lakh (roughly ₹2.05 crores) whereas the highest package for a domestic role stood at ₹1.68 crores per annum.

Of the 1,500 students registered for placements at IIT Madras this year, 1,316 students received job offers (including pre-placement offers) in the first phase that ended on December 10—the institute stated that never before has 73% of the batch received job offers in the first phase.

“This also includes 45 international offers that were received in phase one of placements, which is a record on its own. The quality of academic training and the overall development of students during the program are reflected in the first phase of placements,” said Prof C S Shankar Ram, Advisor (placement), IIT Madras.

At IIT Delhi, the graduating batch has received 1,250 job offers this year, the highest ever. “The average compensation offered on campus this year has shown over 20% increase. Around 80% of the students who showed interest in availing placement facilities in this phase have been recruited up to now. While the quantity of offers and hence number of unique selections is at a record high, there has been over 45% increase in the number of offers received by the campus during this period over last year,” said a statement released by the institute recently.

Similarly, IIT Roorkee received 1,243 job offers this year, highest ever, of which 1,000 job offers were received in the first 84 hours itself. “We had received 1,000 offers in 84 hours and 1,200 offers in 12 days which earlier was achieved in two-and-a-half months. A total of 32 international job offers have been received this year out of which 31 were received in the first three days itself,” said a spokesperson for the institute’s placement team.

Experts have pointed at a demand momentum accelerated by digitisation of businesses as the main reason for this upward trend.

“The current demand for technical talent is massive and we have never seen this kind of demand momentum—it is at an all-time high with customers rapidly accelerating their adoption of digital business model. This situation has led to a buoyant market with multiple opportunities for fresh talent,” said Girish Nandimath, Head HR, Talent Acquisition, Tata Consultancy Services, and added that TCS alone hired over 40,000 fresh graduates in the 2021 financial year and plans to hire another 35,000 by March 2022.

Once again, high job offers came from core engineering sectors across campuses, followed by Information Technology, Analytics and Consulting sectors. The average salary also stayed above ₹25-28 lakh this year, especially in the IT, Finance and R& D sectors.

“We welcomed recruiters hiring in new-age domains like artificial intelligence, big data and cloud solutions, design development for high volume manufacturing, machine learning, robotics etc. across core sectors in addition to the traditional profiles and this has pushed the overall job offers received this year,” said Anishya Madan, head (Office of Career Services), IIT Delhi.