IT firms back to techie-hunting in big way

IT firms are back with a bang in the country’s top engineering and B-School campuses to get the best of brains. Management students too seem to have shrugged off their recession-rooted aversion to the IT-based jobs. They are all ready to harvest their effort and thankfully the salary packages offered by the IT majors are of mind-blowing proportions.

It has been reported that IBM has doubled the salary offered to IIT graduates who get selected under its ‘Blue Scholar’ programme from Rs 7-8 lakh a year to Rs 14-15 lakh.

Infosys Technologies, surely cannot be left behind in the race, and has offered a salary package of Rs 11 lakh per annum to IIM graduates. Apart from making a slight increase in its pay package extended to selected engineering students to Rs 3.25 lakh per year from the former pay of Rs 3 lakh, the IT major also has plans to make 15,000 offers to engineering students for FY11.

The wave of change has made its repercussions down the ladder as well with students from B-Schools too showing genuine interest in joining the IT companies. However as HS Jagadeesh, placement officer, BMS rightly said, the IT firms are all very cautious while making the selections as they want to ensure long-term service from the selected students.

IIT graduates are sure to reap well with the top tech companies such as Microsoft, Accenture, HP, SAP, Amazon, Yahoo and Cisco offering a pay package around Rs 8-12 lakh per annum. This indicates a clear salary rise of 10-15 percent when compared to the salary offers that were made during the previous year.

Meanwhile, through out the country, there has occurred an increase in the number of IT firms frequenting the leading colleges. A preference has been noted among students in IIT Delhi to join in firms like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

Down in the South, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, has garnered a proud feat that IT giants have already selected 550 of the total 900 students who would graduate this year. These students have been offered salaries that range between Rs 4 lakh and Rs 7.5 lakh.

The Delhi College of Engineering too has got more than half of its total outgoing students placed by leading companies. While forty were recruited by TCS, IBM, Deloitte and Airtel closely followed it in number of offered placements.

Professor NS Narahari, director (placement) of RV College of Engineering was happy that companies of the like of Cognizant, HP, Informatica, Infosys, Accenture, TCS visited their campus for selecting students and offered enviable pay packages.

Apart from the IT companies, majors like P&G, HUL, Bain, Boston Consulting Group too have placed themselves in the list of top-payers. Their salary offer ranges from Rs 9 lakh to Rs13 lakh.

Meanwhile, the consulting firms and banks such as Parthenon and Goldman Sachs have offered a salary package of Rs 18.5 to 25 lakh.

The financial services company Tower Research has extended a pay pack of Rs 25 lakh. It has also announced an attractive bonus of Rs 8 lakh at IIT-Delhi for talented youngsters who are capable of handling its IT and algorithm work.