How badly placements in Top Engineering Colleges in India hit due to COVID-19 Outbreak

A lot of top engineering college placements have taken a hit this year with the advent of novel coronavirus (COVID-19). With the conditions not improving, a lot of students who got offers from campus are left in the lurch as a lot of companies have been delaying joining, and some even have revoked the offers. Though there are companies, who are ready to honour the offers given to students, the overall situation on the top engineering college placements in India is gloomy.

Top engineering college placements in India will face issues due to the ongoing crisis for COVID-19. The general placement cycle in the colleges ranges from December till April every year. While many lucky students got the offer early, others are still struggling to find jobs. Some companies have revoked the offers, but most of them are deferring the joining due to the lockdown situation in the country.

Top Engineering Colleges in India: Companies honouring and revoking the offers made during campus recruitment

Although the business has been impacted worldwide, there are many large companies which are honouring the offers made in top engineering colleges in India. This list includes the tech-giants like TCS, Capgemini, Wipro and Google who despite the loss in revenue, are on-boarding students.

Other than these, the major FMCG players like Godrej, PepsiCo, HUL are also honouring the offers. Adding to this list, the consulting firms include Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Bain & Company and the banks include ICICI Bank, Citi Bank, Kotak Mahindra and Axis bank. All these big companies have promised to honour the offers made to students during campus drive.

Another tech giant, Cognizant, has said to on-board 20,000 freshers this fiscal. The company, however, said that their dates of joining would vary based on various factors: 

• Factors like completion of the academic year.
• The business impact of the lockdown and the locations.

E-commerce giant, Flipkart has also assured the students that it will honour the offers made to students. They have also promised not to cut any salaries of the employees, including those for internships. Flipkart CEO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy stated that this crisis has urged people to build a nation. According to him, it is the time to honour commitments related to campus placements. 

A lot of other global companies which go to top engineering colleges in India have assured that there will be no layoffs and they will on-board all the students to whom they gave offers. The companies like AP, Palo Alto Networks, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Salesforce, and many more will hire students.

Companies delaying offers made during campus recruitment

A lot of front line hiring takes place in Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Logistics and Retail in top engineering colleges. These are also sectors which are severely hit due to COVID 19 lockdown. The companies in these sectors have delayed the joining of the graduates. Though the offers are not revoked, there is certainly delay in on-boarding due to bad conditions of these businesses.

Companies revoking offers made during campus recruitment

With the bad condition worldwide, the MNCs have also suffered a loss of revenue. A lot of MNCs have changed their hiring plans or have revoked the offers made to students. Uber, for example, has revoked its offers extended to premier B-Schools. IIT Bombay also saw offers being cancelled by many companies, which include Petrofac, an oilfield services provider. Other major players like Gartner and WorkIndia have rescinded their full-time offers and also internships in top engineering colleges and B-Schools in India.

A well-known US-based consultancy has cancelled job offers of 11 students from IIT Delhi, IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur. Also, it has cancelled offers in IIM Calcutta due to COVID outbreak. A lot of start-ups also rescinded the offers since they could not sustain the current economic distress. This is bound to create doubts in the mind of the students who are graduating from the top engineering colleges in India. With the lockdown and economic conditions getting worse, there are chances of more companies revoking the offers from these colleges.

Looking at the current situation, the Human Resource Development Ministry (MHRD) has advised 23 IITs to organize and initiate special recruitment drives for all students whose offers got revoked. This schedule is tentatively planned in the month of August this year. We can surely see more colleges across the country, taking these steps to help the students.

Also, not only campus placements are affected due to the coronavirus outbreak. There is a general decline in the non-campus or general hiring in companies. Microsoft, for example, sees nearly 46% drop in hiring in the current year.

Let’s Conclude

As the companies continue to delay and withdraw offers, many students are taking the help of LinkedIn. They are posting about it along with their CVs for any help from the connections and corporate world. While the teaching and learning can be taken care of by shifting to the online medium, the top engineering colleges in India said that COVID 19 would definitely impact the placements in the year to come.