Job offers shrink for IIT graduates

Campus hiring comes down to 66% from 79% last year

NEW DELHI: One of every three IITians graduating this year either didn’t find a suitable job or wasn’t found suitable for a job through campus placement, official data show, pointing to shrinking employment opportunities for India’s large pool of engineering talent.

Only 66% of those who made themselves available for campus recruitment landed a job offer in 2016-17, as against 79% in 2015-16 and 78% in 2014-15, according to data made available by IITs to the human resource development (HRD) ministry. Out of 9,104 student in 17 IITs who applied this year, only 6,013 got jobs.

data for placement was shared by 17 IITs. There are 75,000 students studying in 23 IITs in the country.

When contacted, the human resource development ministry said that recruitment by PSUs through GATE scores has increased over these years and many of those recruited are from IITs. “These numbers won’t reflect in the campus recruitment numbers. We need to add these too before coming to conclusions on employment opportunities for IIT students. We, therefore, feel that the employment scene is not really going down for IITs.”

The slide in recruitment from what are considered premier technical institutes reflects the possible impact of the economic downturn in India as also globally. India’s estimated economic growth has slowed to 7.1% in 2016-17 from 7.9% in the previous year.

Larsen & Toubro Ltd, for instance, laid off 14,000 employees during April-September last year, saying it was necessary to stay agile and competitive.

Many companies in the manufacturing and construction sectors slashed jobs in November The January to protect their profit margins post-demonetisation.

A wave of protectionist steps by countries such as the United States has further hit the services sector, especially IT companies.

The top seven IT firms in India are reportedly planning to lay off at least 56,000 engineers.

“There is an increase in the number of IITs but the jobs have remained the same. Naturally jobs have been distributed amongst all the IITs,” Professor NP Padhy, dean of academic affairs, IIT Roorkee told HT.

“At the same time, the new IITs were given an opportunity to start the placement drive much earlier than the rest to help them. Also, the number of startups that participated earlier has also come down. Many students also opt for higher studies,” he said.

IIT sources say that while the number of companies visiting IITs has increased in many cases, job offers have decreased.