Many of the nation’s tier-2 and tier-3 private and public engineering colleges are preparing for what will likely be one of the hardest recruiting seasons in recent memory for the Class of 2024, as a large number of IT/ITeS companies that usually hire a sizable number of students have either rescheduled or stayed away thus far.
Placement officials at more than half a dozen engineering institutions in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan told ET that 30% to 50% of the offers in a typical year come from IT/ITeS businesses alone.
According to Subin Poulose, the company’s training and placement officer, Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant have not yet visited Government Engineering College in Thrissur, Kerala, this year. For the 400 students in the Class of 2022, the college had received almost 770 offers; for the Class of 2023, that number had decreased to over 570 offers.
Several of the major IT/ITeS recruiters, like as Infosys, Capgemini, and Cognizant, have not yet visited the Jaipur-based Poornima group, which operates three engineering colleges and one university. These recruiters are targeting the 2024 class.
When speaking with the engineering college placement cells, IT recruiters give factors such as project cancellations or an uncertain demand environment for their decreased hiring numbers. IT services companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, and Cognizant generally hire a higher proportion of students from private engineering colleges and state government programs than from IITs and NITs.
Until the time of going to press on Saturday, these companies did not reply to emails from ET. A spokesman for HCLTech stated: “HCLTech will visit colleges on time. Although attrition has normalized, demand is still predicted to remain steady but marginally lower than in prior years. Productivity and increasing utilisation will drive efficiency.
