Twenty two-year-old Vasudeva M K was on cloud nine when he got a job offer from a top IT firm commanding an annual pay packet of Rs.4 lakh.
The Bangalore boy who will be graduating from an engineering institute in the IT city next year, had approached the campus placement that started early last week with sweat-beads dotting his forehead.
He had been reading and hearing about the economic storm brewing in the West, which he thought may affect his prospects of entering the job market.
"There is already a talk of our joining dates getting delayed if the global markets don't improve. Anyway, for the moment at least I'm relaxed," said the lanky lad, adding that several of his classmates have also received good offers.
Like Vasudeva's institute, many others are witnessing a smooth placement season. Experts say top recruiters including Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Cognizant and Accenture are lining up to pick up the brightest minds.
M N Chandrasekharaiah, director, training and placement at BNM Institute of Technology in Bangalore, said of the 450 students studying in the final year, about 150 have already been placed, despite the placement season starting in October.
"We have 4-5 top recruiters who come every year."
While at the SJB Institute of Technology, about 85% of the 300 final-year students from streams such as computer science, information science, electrical and electronics, etc have received placements till now. "We started in mid-August and are optimistic of placing all our students," said Gurucharan Singh, director, HR, training and corporate affairs.
Similar are the sentiments and stories from other colleges like RV College of Engineering and M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore.
An HR official from an IT major in Bangalore said though caution is in the air, companies are thronging campuses.
"The top IT firms usually come and take as many as 600-700 of our students. We started on Friday and about 165 have already been placed," said M Vijayadev, head, department of placement and training, Ramaiah Institute, which has 1,200 final-year students including those in MTech and MCA.
Firms are picking students for roles in development, testing, support services, software engineering, infrastructure management with annual salaries upwards of Rs.3 lakh.
" Rs.3.2 lakh per year is the average being offered. It can also go up to Rs.6 lakh in case of multinationals like Oracle, Yahoo or Microsoft. However, these global biggies usually take just two to three students, unlike Infy, Wipro which recruit in large numbers," said a placement official from another college in Bangalore.
According to a placement co-ordinator at RV College, about 60-65% students from computer science and a similar percentage from electronics & communications have received offers with annual pay slightly below Rs.5.5 lakh, while 35-40% have received offers with annual salaries above Rs.5.5 lakh.
Singh said starting salaries are good on account of the development programmes for students and the interactions with industry veterans.
"We give training on soft skills, personality and communication apart from regular interaction with corporates. This helps in honing our students and fetching them good pay packets."
Moreover, to facilitate better coordination and ensure that all the top firms can recruit adequate numbers, institutes have incorporated the slot sharing methodology, wherein all the regular top recruiters can simultaneously come in the first slot and interview all the students.
Vijayadev said earlier just one firm could come in the first slot, but now all the top recruiters come and get to interview all the students.
"Companies end up taking students in large numbers."
However, there is some amount of uncertainty about staggered joining due to the market situation.
"Considering the unfolding financial problems, joining of these students would happen in a phased manner. May be just 20% might end up joining next year, while a majority could actually join in 2013," said Kris Lakshmikanth, co-founder and CEO of Bangalore-based search firm HeadHunters India.
