Friday, December 12, 2008
Chennai: For the first time in recent years, multinational companies, mostly from the finance and consultancy sectors, have pulled out of the campus placements at the premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Madras) citing the global meltdown and terror attacks in Mumbai.

The campus placements had begun on December 1 and now the students are hoping that they could at least convince some companies to conduct interviews using videoconferencing technology.


"The meltdown has affected us with many foreign companies which used to come to our campus staying away this time. Some of these companies pulled out at the last moment after conducting the Pre-Placement Talk (PPT) sessions," said Amit Garg, students secretary (academic affairs) who is also the placement coordinator.

"A total of 200 companies had registered for campus recruitment of which 65 were to visit us in the first ten days. Of these slated for the first ten days 9 companies regretted their inability to visit us and cancelled their visit," admitted Jayakumar, IIT Madras deputy registrar, training and placements. The slots created by the unexpected pull-outs were however, "filled up readily by others who were in the 10th to 15th day slot."

Companies which cited the terror attacks for putting their visit on hold include the Japan-based Sumitomo Chemical one of the largest chemical companies in the world and the Dubai-based Trinity Group on which many of the students of Metallurgy were banking on.

"We are now writing to these companies to at least conduct the interviews through videoconferencing if they are not comfortable visiting India," Amit said.

However, Jayakumar maintained that the placement activity is hectic as usual. "Last year we had 4 to 5 companies recruiting during the day time and 2 or 3 conducting their written test from 6 p.m. onwards. This year we invited 6 companies to carry out the recruitment during the day besides those coming in the evening for written test," he said.

According to him, this year the response from the finance sector companies has been "very lukewarm". In contrast, there is very good response from the core engineering companies and research and development establishments.

The students have also turned to public sector companies like the DRDO, BPCL and NTPC in a big way this time around.

"There is no change in the monetary compensation offered by companies compared to the previous years. While keeping their salary levels same they have compensated by recruiting lesser numbers. This year we have seen some new companies who visited our campus for the first time like Trane Design Centre, Airbus, Irevna Research, Saipem India Projects and Capital IQ," Jayakumar said.