We present a detailed two-part report analysing the trends of the 2015-16 placement season, held in December 2015 and January 2016. This part of the report gives an overview of the placement scenario and unfolds the percentage of students placed, dependence on CGPA and the average number of job offers made. Find the second part of the report here.
IIT Madras’s placement season has always been a favorable hub for recruitment for many companies. This year’s placements season was postponed to January 6th to 14th, after ‘Day 2’ (December 2nd) was unexpectedly interrupted by the Chennai floods. Initially, the placement team was skeptical about this year’s placement season. Prof. Babu Viswanathan, the Advisor of Placements, makes the following statement regarding this: “A few companies withdrew from placements. But we were more concerned about the possible reduction in the number of offers from each company than the reduction in companies. This concern turned to be genuine.”
As expected, the floods did provide major hassles to the placement team. Part of ‘Day 1’ was conducted without electricity, with companies conducting candlelight interviews. However, the placement team took up a few contingency measures to keep placements running. A list of safe hotels was prepared for the company HR representatives to stay at, along with rooms being offered at Taramani Guest House, Bose Einstein Guest House as well as some of the hostels. High speed Internet was made available to enable Skype interviews on Day 2, and the placement team switched to walkie talkies for efficient communication. However, once the airport went down, the placement session was indefinitely called off, and was later rescheduled to be held between 6th and 14th of January, 2016. On the monetary front, rescheduling caused losses to the tune of lakhs of rupees, as basic facilities had to be rearranged for the January leg and also the prices of these facilities shot up in the immediate aftermath of the floods.
The first five days of the postponed event clashed with Saarang 2016, but proceeded without any hassles. There was no excess noise, especially from the Professional Shows, to disturb the proceedings at Bhadra hostel. However, manpower was affected to a certain extent since some of the deputy placement coordinators and placement coordinators were also part of the Saarang organizing team. Moreover, due to the heavy footfall, the entry of the official vehicles of the companies was affected, but this was taken care of.
Most companies were quite understanding and recruited from IIT Madras at the rescheduled dates, offering good roles. There was an increase in the number and quality of placements in the Core sector this year. Sahithi Sampath, the Branch Councillor of the Electrical Engineering Department says, ”We are happy that we can depend on the companies to come and recruit at IIT Madras despite any kind of intervention. Core companies turned out to be the most reliable.” Overall, though there was an increase in the number of visiting companies due to the improved job market, the number of offers was lesser (around 60-70) compared to last year.
The following is a detailed report on this year’s placement season (phase 1 only; phase 2 is in progress). We have compiled the placement data (as on 14th January 2016) in the form of graphs and pie charts, which we present below. We will introduce trends and inferences as we go along. At this juncture, T5E would like to acknowledge the support of the Placement Office for providing the relevant data, the Placements Advisor Prof. V. Babu, the Academic Affairs Secretary and the Branch Councillors for their inputs on this article.
Note: The content provided below is intended only to analyze trends, and it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions from individual data-points. Also, owing to the revised rules of the Placement Office, we are unable to provide some of the statistics that we have in the previous years.
