Mumbai: Unlike some of her classmates, Anupama Kumar was one of the lucky few to land up with a job offer from a mid-sized IT firm in Bangalore. The engineering student from an institute in Davangere in Karnataka feels the course in Java, which she pursued along with her graduation, provided her with a competitive edge. Several of her classmates who had not pursued any related programmes, are finding it tough to get offers as the placement season at their institute is running dry with just about 3-4 companies visiting and placing less than a dozen students so far. At a time when hiring agencies have assumed a conservative approach, firms are choosy about who they recruit, and prefer taking in those with prior training in, say, networking, Java, testing, etc. IT recruitment experts say freshers are not always business-ready due to the industry-academia gap, and have to be trained extensively. On an average, IT firms spend Rs60,000, at times even Rs80,000, per fresher for training (domain expertise and soft skills), which includes travel, food, lodging and time of the trainer. Kamal Karanth, managing director of staffing firm Kelly Services India, says though there are close to one lakh job opportunities for freshers in India at the moment, job-ready freshers are more welcome as the employer's investment in terms of time and training are less. "If there is an alternate proposition to hire freshers having prior training, they are looked at more favourably," says Arun Rao, vice president of global HR, at Hyderabad-based software firm AppLabs. "We plan to hire about 200-250 freshers this year, mostly trained ones." Sandeep K Krishnan, vice president of HR& corporate development at the IT firm Acropetal Technologies, says more than any kind of programme certification, attributes like communication skills, ability to learn, analytical ability etc. are taken into consideration.