BANGALORE: Four of the top-notch recruiters- The Boston Consulting Group, Samsung, Hindustan Unilever and McKinsey left out the placement at engineering colleges this year however, hired the required talent onboard, reports ET.

Placements for McKinsey were organized off-campus for all the engineering colleges whereas BCG skipped recruiting at IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Guwahati. On the other hand, companies like Hindustan Unilever and Samsung Korea made preplacement offer (PPO) for recruiting the talents skipping the usual on-campus placement.

However, this would not affect the exciting process of placements at the colleges. Considering the surge in the number of students in the batches and expansion of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management, plenty of changes are on the cards.

Mohak Mehta, former placement manager of IIT-Bombay, lends help to academic institutes in the placement process, said, "In the next few years we are likely to see a shift in the current process as more institutes come up and companies feel the need to cover more campuses."

According to Mehta, placements for IITs can be hosted at one or two of the branches or placements can also be outsourced to an agency. "We have already seen a trend of companies using the preplacement route to hire students. That will happen in a much bigger way as companies look to pick up tried-and-tested talent," said G Balasubramanian, chief placement officer, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani.

"We were able to make PPOs to 30% of interns, thus filling our requirements in supply chain and R&D (research & development) functions for this year. Our practice has always been to make the most of the internship as it enables us to assess people for a full two months," a HUL spokesperson said. In addition to this, HUL can also participate in final placements in case the PPO route does not fetch the required talent.

The popular day zero at all the IITs is set on the same day which restricts the visit to all the campuses and thus McKinsey & Co decided to take the PPO route instead. "Now we can take applications from all campuses. We want to be inclusive," said Sunkara.
"For IITs that are bigger and more accessible, companies may come to campus; others may have to move to a job fair type of scenario.
Also, companies with smaller requirements may just skip the final process as summers become more important," said a placement cell member of one of the top IITs. "It goes without saying that not all companies can afford to go offcampus," said Babu Viswanathan, professor and placement adviser, IIT-Madras. Relaxation on the placement rules have been asked by many companies.

Many institutes are support on-campus placements. "In off-campus placements, the basic discipline gets lost. This creates a lot of confusion among students. Off-campus strategy is acceptable only if companies are not able to visit all campuses at the same time," said NP Padhy, professor-in-charge, placements, at IIT-Roorkee.
Affordability for an off-campus placement is yet another issue to be met. 

On the other hand, Amazon and Microsoft are game for both the processes of placements. "Both approaches are important for us and we would continue to invest in on-campus hiring as well as internships going forward," said Raj Raghavan, head-HR at Amazon India.

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