As pressure of going home without job mounts, IT graduates opt for placement platforms

The number of companies visiting campuses has not changed at various engineering colleges, but experts say the intake of freshers is very low. (Illustration by Suneesh Kalarickal)

As the 2023 academic session ends, slow campus hiring coupled with delays in the onboarding of new hires has led IT freshers to opt for placement training platforms to land a job before they reach home.

Placement preparation and upskilling platforms are witnessing a huge surge in the enrolment of IT graduates opting for various crash courses as the wave of exorbitant salaries to freshers subsides, said Aashay Mishra, co-founder and COO of PrepInsta, a placement preparation site.

However, enrolment does not automatically translate into hiring. In October 2022, PrepInsta Prime saw over 18,000 people getting jobs via its platform. However, that has tapered off, and the number of those placed in February and March this year were much lower, around 3,000 to 4,000 a month.

“The hiring trend in IT companies in India has been affected by the current economic slowdown. It has slowed down in the last few months, and we anticipate that this trend may continue until the end of May,” Mishra said.

Opting for a placement preparation site

The demand for job-oriented bootcamp programmes has grown by 86 percent in the last six months versus the same period a year earlier at upskilling platform Great Learning.

“College freshers and recent graduates couldn't get jobs through campus placements and many of those who did, ended up getting their offers deferred or rescinded due to the prevailing macroeconomic conditions. This has prompted them to build more coveted skills for jobs in fields like data science, electric vehicle design, software development, etc,” said Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder, Great Learning.

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With the 2023 academic year coming to a close, he said there is also increased pressure on the graduating students to go back home with a job in hand.

When Greater Noida-based Prajwal Jain, 21, completed her Computer Science Engineering (CSE) degree this year, she was looking forward to campus placement to begin. However, given the prevailing conditions, fewer companies visited.

“Due to a decline in the industry and a decrease in hiring nationwide, our situation has been quite difficult. There are fewer on-campus company visits, resulting in increased competition among students,” she told Moneycontrol.

Similar was the case with Meerut-based Rahul Rastogi*, an IT graduate. He said though companies have visited the campus, only a few recruited, and that too in minuscule numbers. “The pressure is too much. I can’t go home in Sonipat without a job in hand after spending lakhs here (Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh),” he told Moneycontrol.

Increased competition for students beyond tier 1 colleges

The lack of exposure students of lesser-known institutes get compared to those from tier 1 colleges has created more hurdles for engineers in the already worsening talent market.

As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), which falls under the Ministry of Education, there are over 39 lakh students in India pursuing various courses in engineering and technology in at least 3,500 engineering colleges.

“Engineering colleges across India have around 2 lakh students who appear for placement exams each year, out of which 70 percent are from tier 2 and tier 3 colleges that receive very little exposure compared to students from tier 1 colleges,” said PrepInsta’s Mishra.

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He said even students of Indian Institutes of Technology who wish to obtain a higher package of, say, over Rs 8 lakh per annum would need the assistance of upskilling platforms.

PrepInsta expects the number of those signing up to increase due to the commencement of the new financial year and predicts an increase in fresh requirements.

Trending skills

The number of companies visiting campuses has not changed at various engineering colleges, but experts say the intake of freshers is very low. Besides, companies have tightened the selection process with multiple stages and a low pass rate.

“We have been receiving visits from various companies at irregular intervals, but we hope that more companies come to our campus to improve our job prospects. Currently, we rely more on off-campus placement exams than on-campus ones,” said 22-years-old Aryan Choudhary, a CSE graduate.

According to Mishra, the placement process typically involves several stages, such as an aptitude round that tests quantitative, logical and verbal skills, a coding test with various categories, followed by a group discussion (GD) and a personal interview.

“These rounds cover topics that are not typically included in the college curriculum, requiring students to seek assistance from placement preparation firms,” he said.

Courses for artificial intelligence (AI), data science, full stack development and Python, among others, are among the more opted-for on both platforms. Experts say it's because these are all high in demand and come with handsome pay.

For instance, demand for AI and related talent has grown by 11 percent over the last six months, as per data from foundit, a talent search firm. Besides IT, retail, telecom and BFSI, the advertising, market research (MR) and public relations (PR) sectors are the biggest contributors to this growth in demand.

Although there is huge demand for these roles, Sekhar Garisa, CEO of foundit, earlier told Moneycontrol that talent is scarce. “The growing demand for these roles across industries has made hiring a challenge due to the lack of skilled professionals,” he said.