Engineering Campus Placement finds no Takers
Engineering students from top city colleges are struggling to get jobs with fewer companies participating in campus placements, and even students who find employers are being offered poor pay packages.
Don Bosco Institute of Technology (Kurla), Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (Matunga), DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering (Vile Parle) and Thakur College (Kandivali) are among campuses that are finding it difficult to draw recruiters.
Students of mechanical, civil and product engineering – considered core courses – have been hit the hardest by recruiters’ lack of interest.
Ashutosh Sinha, a final-year chemical engineering student, has been among the toppers in his college, but has received only a handful of offers. “In the initial days of placements, there were no takers for chemical engineering. The packages are as low as 1.8 lakh per annum,” he said.
Campus placements have ended in most colleges, but many students are still without job offers. “I may be forced to look for a job myself and settle for an average pay,” said Reshma Urivle, a final-year mechanical engineering student.
College officials are equally worried. “While we are fairly successful in placing IT and computer science students, we are experiencing difficulties in placing students from other disciplines such as mechanical and civil,” said Niraj Kapre, placement officer at Don Bosco. He added that 80 per cent of IT and computer students had been placed, while only 22 per cent of mechanical engineering students had been signed up by companies.
PS Kudalkar, placement coordinator of Veermata Jijabai institute, said that apart from poor interest among recruiters for students of traditional courses, lower salaries being offered by willing companies was also a major concern.
“Several companies select students but do not offer decent remuneration. M Tech and B Tech students are being offered the same package, which is not justified as a postgraduate student puts in two more years of study in the field,” Kudalkar said.
Rajendra Khavekar, placement officer at DJ Sanghvi, also said that packages for mechanical engineering and M Tech were extremely low.
Officials of Thakur College said that its placement rate had been decent this year. “Initially, the packages for streams other than computer science and IT were low, but the situation later improved,” a placement officer at the college said.
An HR professional from a leading IT firm said that there was less demand for students of core engineering courses across the country. “But compared to other cities, the problem is bigger in Mumbai and Pune,” he said.
Source : Mumbai Mirror
