Patna: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna, has set a new record for providing jobs to students enrolled there despite COVID-19 leaving a disastrous impact on the job sector.
Officials said the overall placement percentage stood at 83.51 — up by 12 per cent — this year with more than 111 companies showing up on campus to provide more than 200 job offers. Many of the companies showing interests in the students were multinational ones like Rakuten, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Goldman Sachs. Last year, 95 companies had come for hiring.
“We are pleased to see plenty of job offers coming from both Indian and multinational companies even at the time of COVID-19 pandemic,” the institute’s training and placement officer Kripa Shnakar Singh told the media on Tuesday.
“What was further heartening, the international offers broke all records this year. The maximum pay offer coming last year was Rs3.8 million per annum but this year, it has climbed to Rs5.9 million,” Singh said. According to him, a Japanese MNC Rakutin gave an annual package of Rs5.9 million to three M.Tech computer science students.
Those getting placements include 117 Bachelor of Technology (BTech) students and 42 Master in Technology (MTech) students. The maximum number of placements was made under the computer science department. Officials said BTech placement has been 94.35 percent whereas the MTech placement touched 62.50 per cent. In the last academic session of 2018-19, 210 students had got placement while in 2017-18, 192 got jobs.
Officials said more companies were showing interest in the students admitted to the IIT, Patna after it became fully operational since 2015. As per the report, a total of 39 companies reached the campus in 2015 with jobs, followed by 33 in 2015-16, 46 in 2016-17, 88 in 2017-18, 95 in 2018-19 and 111 in the current year.
The attractive job offers to the students assume significance given that COVID-19 has left an adverse impact on various sectors. According to a joint report prepared by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as many as 4.1 million youth in India lost jobs due to COVID-19 pandemic with most job losses in the construction and farm sector. The report was released in August this year.
Another report prepared by the private think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said around 6.6 million white-collar professionals lost their jobs after coronavirus lockdown, wiping out all employment gains made since 2016. Among the salaried class, industrial workers lost 5 million jobs, the CMIE report added.
A CMIE survey also states that the unemployment rate in Bihar has increased to 46.6 per cent while a June 2020 report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey says unemployment is growing at the rate of 30.9 per cent among Bihar youths.
