T-Schools campus track survey in '06

• Most Indian IT companies emerge as the major gainers on this year’s CRI*.
• Management consultancy is the most preferred sector amongst students from premier institutes

As per ACNielsen Campus Track T-Schools 2006 survey, global Internet search firm Google appears as the top-most prospective employer for the Indian engineering students of the 2007 batch. Yahoo!, featuring for the first time in the survey, emerged as the third most preferred employer.

The survey analysed student perceptions about recruiters and the factors used by engineering students graduating in 2007 to evaluate prospective employers. From previous years, the scope of the study has expanded from the 20 leading engineering school to 73 this year.

The other interesting finding is the increasing popularity of Indian firms as preferred employers compared to global giants. Infosys' relative position moved up by 14 places on the CRI as compared to the last track. Satyam and Cognizant were some of the other major gainers on the CRI this year.

Engineers Eye Management Consultancy; IT/Software Favourite Sector
Management consultancy follows IT/software to be the favourite career option in the premier engineering campuses. Preference for management consultancy is significantly higher amongst IITians as compare to other institutes. Energy/power and biotech are the other areas which are gaining interest amongst set of the student. However, telecom is no longer perceived as the industry of the future.

Let's compare the trends of the years. The Top 10 companies on the CRI list of the 2005 batch included a wide spectrum of companies in IT/Consulting, FMCG and Core Sectors . The 2 006 batch wanted IT/Consulting and FMCG , and finally the 2007 batch has only IT/Consulting firms in its Top10 list. So, the shift in perception as 'Dream Recruiter' has narrowed down to only IT/consulting companies over the years. W hile there was only 1 Indian IT company among the Top 10 list of the 2005 batch, there are three this time - Infosys, TCS and Wipro.

Opting for Higher Education
The interest in pursuing a post-graduate degree continues to be high with students. About 55 per cent of all students want to pursue an MBA and this trend has been increasing over the years, as seen when compared with the earlier batches, making it even more attractive than M.Tech/MS.

In fact higher study, especially MBA, is the reason behind engineering students wanting to move out of their first job early. This year's results show that about 70 per cent of the students expect to move out of their first job in 3 years or less, mainly to pursue higher studies.

“The percentage of students opting out of their job in the first few years for higher education has been increasing over the years

. This is becoming a major concern for the HR departments. Since most students plan to pursue their higher studies, the HR departments should organise innovative retention plans like sponsored on-job MBA programmes for the Engineering graduates” says Prasenjit Das, associate director, ACNielsen India.

Remuneration expectations too have seen a change with this batch of engineering graduates. Average salary expectation from their dream company is close to Rs 6 lakh, a rise of 15 per cent from last year .

Google replaces Microsoft at the top spot
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Oracle and IBM emerged as the top 5 companies among students from the top 20 engineering campuses.

The study indicates that job content and growth prospects in the company as well as the size of the recruiting company and its market standing continue to be important parameters for selection.

By ranking individual companies on these various parameters, the ACNielsen Campus Track T-schools can be used to devise an action plan by individual companies to attract better talent by analysing the various attributes of 'Goodwill' enjoyed by it, within the engineering talent pool.

The overall effect on this goodwill is accumulated to compute a composite 'goodwill score' used to construct the Campus Recruiter Index. This index reflects the overall standing of companies in the minds of students. The CRI comprises companies mentioned by respondents and not all Indian companies.