There are four categories of engineering colleges whose students are seeking four categories of opportunities during the campus placement season and the equation in mathematical terms could be described as four (square) or 42. Recruiters classify engineering colleges as: top-tier category (including the IITs, BITS Pilani, IT-BHU, College of Engineering, Anna Univeristy and a few others); tier-2 category (NITs such as the ones at Warangal, Trichy and Suratkal, Delhi College of Engineering and PEC); tier-3 category (the other NITs and engineering departments of some renowned universities); and tier-4 category (a mix of privately run institutes to engineering departments of some state universities).

Opting for work

There are four professional options that majority of engineering students pursue, two job-related and two higher studies related. One option is the niche jobs requiring specialist technical skills such as those offered by companies such as Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Cisco, Flextronics etc. There are usually fewer of these jobs in the offing. Next would be the more assembly line type technology engineering and programming jobs offered in volume by companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS, HCL etc, who even in the times of downturn hire in thousands and are not very particular about the stream within engineering. As on joining, all freshers go through a 12-15 week training regimen that equips them with the requisite programming and language skills to work on a ?global client project?. Companies on their end alter their strategy depending on the campus they are visiting. A niche player may pick up 20 to 25 from one of the IITs and just a handful from a tier-2 or tier-3 institute, whereas a broadbased IT/ITeS player will easily pick up 50 students in a single day from a lesser known institute and just three or four students from an IIT.

Another quick analogy to throw in here is the attitude of both recruiters and students on engineering campuses versus MBA campuses. Technology companies take pains to draw up and execute their MBA campus strategy as they are hiring their future leaders and brand ambassadors. Hiring from engineering institutes, on the other hand, is a numbers game. Companies look for specific technical skill sets and this requirement alone is given maximum weightage. IT companies that can make as many as 40 to 50 job offers in one day on a single engineering campus will probably hire less than that total amount from all the MBA campuses put together that it visits in that year?s placement season.

Attitudes also differ. From the same company, a 24-year-old from a top B-school will show little excitement on getting an offer than what a 22-year-old engineering candidate would show on a campus like say NIT, Jalandhar. MBA students from premier B-schools are usually lapped up quickly as can be seen during final placements that last for 5 to 10 days at top B-schools, while placements at engineering institutes can span across several weeks and even months.

Coming back to the other two options for students. These entail academic pursuits with students pursuing either an MBA or a masters for those wanting further specialisation and research in their chosen stream of engineering. Till the 1980s and 1990s a BTech or its equivalent was considered as a critical first degree but not the final degree by a large number of students. A four-year engineering degree that gave students the requisite technical skills to land a job with multinationals such as Siemens or Philips or with public sector undertakings such as BHEL, NTPC or SAIL was not aspirational enough for engineering students who preferred to pursue a second degree in management, or specialise in their stream with an MTech, which held the promise of research or better job prospects.

Fast forward to the 21st century and the scene has taken a 360-degree turn with IT firms dominating the recruitment scene on engineering campuses. According to a Boston Consulting Group report: ?The IT sector has grown at an impressive rate of around 30%, adding nearly 25% to its workforce each year over the past five years. Employment figures are likely to grow at about 10% annually over the next five years.? Between 2007 and 2008, the report says, ?There has been an astronomical 30% rise in salaries for entry-level engineers and associates.?

Even at the peak of the global economic crisis last year, huge pools of engineers were given offers by IT and ITeS companies. These companies realise that the services sector, of which they are a part, is going to dominate the Indian economy and they want to be poised for growth once the markets start recovering. Speaking about how the firm was handling its fresh engineering graduates this year, an analyst working with one of the IT companies said, ?On boarding may happen in September this year, whereas earlier it used to be in June. While no offers have been revoked, the time frame and by when these students will join remains a question. It could be extended to January 2010.?

This is the second of a 3-part series on campus recruitment. Next: placement trends on campuses in the US

malvika.chandan@expressindia.com