Various corporate firms have deferred their campus placement plans for this year. The placements, originally scheduled to begin from July, have now been postponed indefinitely with firms citing “tough global economic conditions”. The news came as a big blow for engineering students and colleges in the state ahead of the new academic year (2012-13).

Nearly 2 lakh students from Andhra Pradesh are available for placements every year, the highest in the country. Tamil Nadu comes second with 1.8 lakh students while Karnataka and Maharashtra supply about 80,000 students a year to the job pool. Campus recruitment, which used to take place in the last semester (IV year, II semester), had been advanced to the seventh semester (IV year, I semester) from last year (2011-12). Consequently, corporates had visited campuses from July last year for recruitment.

This year, too, students and college managements had been expecting a similar recruitment schedule and were preparing accordingly. However, to their shock, they have received communications from major corporate groups including IT companies postponing the campus placement schedule.

Postponement of placements worries engg. colleges
Major corporates had recruited five lakh B.Tech graduates in 2011-12 across the country. Of them, two lakh jobs, amounting to 40 per cent, had gone to students from engineering colleges in AP including IIT-Hyderabad, IIIT-Hyderabad, BIT-Pilani Hyderabad campus and other prominent engineering institutions such as CBIT, MGIT, Vasavi, Gokaraju Rangaraju, Gitam, KLU, Vignan, VNR Vignan Jyothi, Narayanamma etc.

Incidentally, of the 12 lakh B.Tech seats available in the country, Andhra Pradesh has the highest, nearly 3.5 lakh seats in 750 engineering colleges. While IT firms account for over 80 per cent of the total placements, nearly 20 per cent placements are provided by electronics, chemical, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering firms.

Last year (2011-12), IT firms had recruited 2.5 lakh B.Tech graduates across the country against 2 lakh in 2010-11. Nearly 1,00,000 IT jobs were bagged by students from Andhra Pradesh engineering colleges. Students and managements are more tensed as the firms have not given any information about when the placement session would actually begin.

Sources, however, indicate that the firms will begin the placement session around December. “The campus placement scenario in engineering colleges had improved only last year after a gap of three years due to global economic slowdown, especially in the IT sector. Most engineering colleges were in crisis due to poor admissions on account of this. However, with increased placements last year, we were expecting a good response for engineering admissions this year.

“However, the reports about postponement of campus placements by corporate firms ahead of the start of new academic session has become of matter of serious concern,” said Dr P. Rajeshwar Reddy, general secretary, Consortium of Engine-ering Colleges Manage-ments Association of AP.
However, the managements are confident that the situation will improve by December this year and the corporates will resume campus placements.

“We are confident of convincing students and parents to take admissions in engineering colleges as it will take three years for these students to be eligible for campus recruitment and things will definitely improve by then,” said Mr Nimmaturi Ramesh, chairman of Aur-ora Group of Institutions.