Reasons: Economic slowdown, poor planning

Chennai: Decision by IT companies to deny jobs to campus recruits reflect poor planning on the part of the company while the global economic slowdown is also a key factor, industry experts say.

HR head of a prominent IT firm told Deccan Chronicle on condition of anonymity that global economic slowdown and automation of IT industry has affected recruitment in the sector.

“The economy slowdown has affected the IT sector. Even in our company this year recruitment was down by 7 per cent as compared to last year. The automation of coding, testing and software areas has also brought down recruitment,” he said.

However, he termed it only a temporary phenomenon. “It will soon change,” he said. He pointed out that e-commerce sector is also facing a big setback at present. They are not able to pay huge salaries that they promised during recruitment.

Another human resource head of a major software firm said that it reflected poor planning of manpower management on the part of the company. “In campus recruitments, the appointments are not made for the next month. These appointment orders are given for the next year expecting more business. In some cases, it may get delayed by a few months. But denying jobs for the campus recruitment reflects poor planning on the part of the company,” he said.

Professor M. Sekar, former dean, College of Engineering, Guindy, said educational institutions has the responsibility to ensure that the company provides jobs to their students. They also should ensure the recruiters are adhering to the timeline that they give while recruiting.

“Mostly all big companies, which recruit students from reputed colleges keep their promises.  It is only the middle level companies recruiting students from middle-level colleges that are struggling. It happens in cycles. Some two, three years back Wipro didn’t give job for some of their campus recruits,” he said.
Career  consultant Jayaprakash A. Gandhi cautioned that colleges have to be very careful before allowing the company to recruit their students.

“For engineering graduates, it’s next to impossible to find job outside the colleges. To boost their campus recruitment numbers, the colleges don’t allow students, who are already placed to attend another interview. Students should be allowed to attend more interviews,” he said. “If students have more than one job in the campus placements, they can choose the best job and avoid these kinds of situations,” he added.