Campus hiring picks up again

AFTER a gap of few years, recruitment activity by tech companies picked up at engineering colleges in the city. Several IT firms, including startups, started hiring in hundreds in campuses this year. Final year students and fresh graduates are flooded with multiple offers including home-based job opportunities.

As per the industry experts, search for talent has already begun in the city owing to high attrition and dearth of experienced professionals. Most of the IT firms prefer training the freshers over lateral hiring due to the higher cost component. It is anticipated that MNCs and top tech companies are set to hire more than 2 lakh freshers across the country during this financial year.

Global IT majors like Accenture, Wipro, Cognizant, Deloitte and Virtusa have commenced campus recruitment early this year, unlike earlier times. By the end of March, the city-based engineering colleges are likely to see record placements of the students with highest salary packages when compared to that offered in campus hiring during the previous years. K Kishore, Director - Training and Placement at Vasavi College of Engineering, said: "Both the number of opportunities and average salary packages to the freshers increased this year. Meanwhile, the tech companies have given a benchmark also. Those who are good at programming skills are getting almost double the regular packages. We anticipate 90 per cent students to get placed by March." He adds, "The average package offered by product development companies have almost doubled to the freshers having good skills. The highest offer was Rs 11 lakh per annum (LPA) three years before, while it is around Rs 19 LPA now. However, the intake of freshers is more by service based companies that used to offer Rs 5 LPA on an average. At present, they are offering Rs 7 LPA to the freshers having skills."

Kishore informed that such a differentiated compensation was not there during last year. The package used to be same for all freshers, except some outstanding students. Moreover, there is a strict competition among the companies to attract talent. Even the startups are paying at par with the MNCs offering a minimum salary package of Rs 6 LPA to the fresh engineering graduates. P Kiran Kumar, Deputy Director - Corporate Relations at Malla Reddy Group of Institutions, said: "The campus hiring increased almost 35 per cent to 4,000 this year against 3,000 last year. The minimum package offered was Rs 3.5 LPA till previous year, whereas it starts from Rs 5 LPA this year. Companies like Oracle, HP and Dell offered highest pay of Rs 15 LPA, Rs 14.5 LPA and Rs 8 LPA respectively."