Considering the pressure from engineering students and parents,engineering colleges in the city are contemplating on holding campus placements for the batch that will pass out in 2010 in July as well as December. However,only about six IT and non-IT companies have expressed their will to recruit freshers in July. It is clear that mass campus placements will happen only in December. After receiving a letter from National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) in February about postponing campus placements from July to December,the training and placement officers from about 35 engineering colleges in the city had decided to approach about 50-60 leading IT and non-IT companies to ascertain whether they will come for placements in July or December Speaking to The Indian Express on Wednesday,Shitalkumar Rawandale,president,Federation of Training and Placement Officers (FTPO) said,Out of the 60 such companies,only about 6 are ready to come in July. The rest,including the usual mass recruiters like Infosys,Wipro,L & T Infotch have decided to come in December. Taking into account the apprehension of students,colleges do not want to lose out on any opportunity of campus recruitments. One reason why we are inclined to go ahead with July recruitments,despite the less number of companies is that there is no guarantee the situation will improve in December and companies would hire then, said Rawandale,who is also the training and placement officer with Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering. An obvious fallout of holding placements in July and December is that top rankers might have to settle for a smaller company if they are hired in July. However,if they wait until December,there are chances of the being placed in a better company with higher pay package. In order to do away with this dilemma among students,Rawandale said that colleges are open to giving opportunity to a student who has received an offer letter in July to appear for campus interview in December as well. Currently,when a student receives an offer letter from an IT company,he is not allowed to sit for campus placement interview of any other IT company. But,he may appear for an interview of a non-IT industry, said Sandeep Meshram,associate training and placement officer with College of Engineering Pune (COEP). This rule,however,will have to be relaxed this year considering the students benefit,Rawandale said. Meanwhile,the FTPO has welcomed NASSCOM guidelines to commence recruitments in the eight semester (December) instead of in the fifth or sixth semester (June-July). We agree that students get complacent after receiving offer letters. We are willing implement NASSCOM guidelines. However,it is impossible for us to do so this year because of the slowdown and we shall consider it next year, Rawandale said. The FTPO has decided to meet the NASSCOM authorities on Thursday to convince them that colleges will not be able to reschedule campus placement to December and will go ahead in July as well as December.
