After a dull Phase 1, focus turns to getting more recruiters, ETHRWorld

Bengaluru | New Delhi: The placement war rooms of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are working overtime to come up with strategies to attract more job offers as the engineering colleges enter the second phase of placements. After the first phase that ended in December at the old IITs, the number of students from the Class of 2024 who landed a job was 15-20% lower compared with a year earlier.

With companies across sectors — led by technology products and services — slashing hiring numbers, IITs are exploring all avenues to ensure that as many students as possible graduate with a job. Meanwhile, some students who are yet to get placed have been applying to off-campus jobs since last month, to have a backup in hand should on-campus offers not come through, students at top IITs told ET.

The institutes, which had already expanded their recruiter list, are now reaching out to even more companies through alumni, venture capitalists and social networking platforms like LinkedIn. Startups and public sector organisations are among those being tapped, placement officials said.

“Our target for the second phase is to reach out to as many companies as we can … we are not limiting ourselves with numbers,” said Rajib Maity, chairperson of the Career Development Centre at IIT-Kharagpur. “We are…