Global slowdown hits campus hiring

Placement has been impacted as many of candidates have received offer letters, but not getting the appointment letters. Companies are not giving joining dates. When IITs and IIMs are facing challenges, the situation in tier-II colleges is not that great -Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO of CIEL HR,tells Bizz Buzz

Several colleges in engineering and management educations including many reputed ones like IITs and IIMs are facing the heat in terms of campus placement owing to current slowdown in hiring across key sectors like technology and startups.

According to sources in the know, many candidates in marquee educational institutions have received offer letters, but are yet to get the joining dates from employers. This has created a situation of uncertainty among students and colleges, which are pressing for early joining dates from recruiters.

“Placement has been impacted as many of them (candidates) have received offer letters, but not getting the appointment letters. Companies are not giving joining dates. Some companies are even talking about withdrawing offer letters because colleges are putting pressure on companies to give joining dates. This is happening in many top institutes including IIMs. When IITs and IIMs are facing challenges, the situation in tier-II colleges is not that great,” Aditya NarayanMishra, CEO of CIEL HR, told BizzBuzz.

According to HR sector experts, placement records don’t take into account whether a candidate is onboarded or not. These records only take into account the offer letters. That is the reason why a mismatch exists between placement cell data points of colleges and actual onboarding of candidates.

“Placement records will not indicate such trend as it is a function of offer letters. If a candidate has got the offer letter, then he is considered as placed and no record is maintained whether the candidate gets the offer letter or not. It is not reported,”said Mishra of CIEL HR.

Sources in the know said that candidates usually get onboarded during May-June and many such candidates are currently waiting for getting their joining dates.

This is not the first time when many such offer letters are doled out without giving any specific joining dates. Last year, many engineering colleges have seen offer letters from IT firms without specific joining dates.

Recently, IT firms like Wipro have said that they will prioritise onboarding those freshers who have been given offer letters earlier.

“We are first honouring our offers to those freshers to whom we have given offer lettersearlier. So, in fresher hiring front, our focus is to onboard those who have earlier receivedoffer letters. As far overall hiring is concerned, we have some space to improve ouremployee utilisation levels further. So, it will depend on the overall demand environment,”SaurabhGovil, Chief HR Officer of Wipro said during the post results press conference.

Meanwhile, many IT firms are skipping campus placements this year amid a tepid demand environment.