IT companies have started the recruitment process across campuses all over the country. Interviews usually start only during the last semester. This year, however, the interviews have started a little earlier—in the 7th semester. Last year around 2 lakh were hired and this year the number could go up to 2.5 lakhs. Students are expected to join in July or August.

In Tamil Nadu, 702 students of Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai, 515 students of Velammal Group of institutions, 500 of Sairam Group of Colleges, and 645 of RMK Group of Institutions received offer letters. Also 417 candidates from Sona College in Salem and 700 students from Amity received offer letters from Accenture and Wipro respectively. Cognizant has recruited 807 students from Anna University’s Guindy campus in Chennai, and 703 from PSG College in Coimbatore. The US debt deal does not seem to have impacted hiring in any way and; in fact, RMK of RMK Group of Institutions recruited nearly 200 more this year.

Andhra Pradesh usually supplies the maximum number of students to the IT industry with nearly 2 lakh recruitments per year, followed by Tamil Nadu with nearly 1.8 lakh students.

With companies starting to visit campuses in the seventh semester itself, the number of recruitments is likely to go up as compared to previous years. Also emerging and smaller niche IT companies such as Thoughtworks, muSigma, and Robert Bosch are joining the campus recruitment process. Pay packets would, however, remain the same—around 3 lakhs to 3.25 lakhs per recruit.

Cognizant continues to lead in the recruitment race, as it believes that the growth rate of an individual’s career is directly proportional to the growth rate of the company. It has demonstrated this by promoting nearly 30% of its employees last year and this helps the company get the much-favored first interview slot in nearly all premier institutes in the country.