The most awaited season for an engineer is here – not winter, or monsoon, but the placement season. A period for an engineer that he has waited for the last four years, and now it is time that his fate is decided and sealed. His future will be decided in a cubicle, today, by some delegates of a company, who are meeting him for the first time, for barely a while. All his hard work and dedication of four long years comes down to just this moment: whether he will be placed or not!
One thing every student and parent looks for before admissions in any engineering college is the placement record that college enjoys, the maximum and average packages offered by companies to the students graduating there. Luckily for us, SPIT is amongst the top in this list in Mumbai University.
Since the time it started, SPIT has always enjoyed good placements, which have improved every year. This year, the placement season was a mixed bag, being good for many students, but not for some. SPIT achieved its highest pay package in history, at Rs. 18 LPA, which was another feather in its hat. Yet, the shadow in this season of light was that the number of students not getting selected in the companies has increased over the previous years, and the number of those getting jobs in their dream companies has reduced. The average placements have dropped from 96% of students placed last year to 94.25%, which is a marginal drop, but a drop nevertheless. This is a matter of concern and a sign of worry for all concerned with SPIT’s placements, but since the placement season has not ended yet, you may never know if there is a twist in the tale that is yet to come.
Credit Suisse hired two students, both of whom had interned with them earlier. Some of the other large companies were: Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Nvidia, Deloitte, MuSigma, Diebold, KPMG, Barclays, L&T Core, Mitsubishi, BNP Paribas, Siemens, J P Morgan etc. There were a lot of opportunities for deserving students to grab on, and those who were efficient enough did actually succeed in this task.
The Training & Placement Office, headed by Mr. Sikka, works day & night to prepare students for their interviews. They start preparing students a year in advance, when they go for their internship interviews, which has a lasting effect on the chances of a student being placed in a company.
Some years back, a student who had excelled through his whole course was unable to clear the interview of a reputed company for some reason. This was shocking news for everyone, so the TPO went to the company representatives and detailed the excellent reports of the student in front of them. He was called for a re-interview, the result being he got selected after that round. This just goes to show how deeply the college staff is concerned about their students, and how that works out for the students’ best.
Some things are certainly clear. The maximum package has increased – definitely beneficial for the future years. The overall outcome may be marginally less than expected, but this is a sector SPIT will look into and certainly will correct soon enough. A lot of positives and some negatives have been seen from this year’s placement season. No college is perfect by itself, the students make it perfect. We hope that one day, all our problems will be overcome and students graduating from SPIT will touch the skies.
This article is part of PaGaLGuY’s innovative Internship programme for engineering students. Currently, two such programmes are on – one on Creative Writing, the other is a Certification on Digital Media. If you are interested in partaking and bagging a certificate, besides learning the nuances of effective writing, mail us at [email protected].