…Engineering students never had it so good with campus recruitments by major companies becoming popular in Kerala.
Fuelled by a boom in the IT sector, campuses of major engineering colleges across Kerala have been witnessing a significant upsurge in campus recruitments. Coming after a slowdown in recent years, the upsurge has been so marked that it has led to an upbeat mood on campuses in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.

Branches preferred :

The revival of fortunes in the IT sector is clearly visible with more software companies visiting campuses in Kochi to recruit students. In terms of payment also, software companies are way ahead of the others. Students are offered salaries ranging from Rs.15, 000 to Rs.30, 000 at the entry-level. Leading companies offered an annual pay packet ranging from Rs.2 lakhs to Rs.4 lakhs to the students. Experts say that apart from IT, the civil and mechanical sectors are also recruiting students these days. The boom in construction activity combined with the emerging trends in the mechanical sector are some of the reasons cited for the increase in number of companies recruiting students specialising in Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Offers from foreign companies are also on the rise in certain specific areas like Ship Design and Construction. According to Narayanan of the Department of Ship Technology, Cusat, around 30 per cent of the students who passed out from the department over the years have been placed in major companies in the United States, West Asia, Australia and Africa.

High salaries :

Last year, three NIT-C students hit the jackpot with the highest offer of Rs 5.5 lakhs made by Trilogy Limited, U.S., a multinational company (MNC). The salary offered on the campus was higher than the `highest’ salary of Rs. 4.25 lakhs that was offered the previous year. A couple of B.Tech. students accepted the second highest offer of Rs. 4 lakhs per annum. “The companies coming in were so many and the students so few that we were forced to refuse some companies,” observes Dr. Gopalan. Most of the companies were IT firms but 35 per cent were from the core sectors. Of 57 students in the Civil Engineering stream, 33 got placements last year. Four students of Civil Engineering and two from the Mechanical Department were absorbed by Larsen and Turbo ECC, with an annual salary package of Rs. 3 lakhs each. The average salary was Rs. 2.5 lakhs and the lowest was Rs. 1.8 lakhs.