Initial indications from some top institutes who have completed their placements this year seem to indicate a marked dip in IT recruitment. As per the statistics put out by placements site Coolavenues.com, IT placements at 4 of the top 15 management institutes have fallen on an average by about 50 per cent. Top campus recruiters like Infosys, HCL Technologies, HCL Infosystems and Wipro appear to have gone easy on campus recruitments this year. Companies like Mastek, Silverline and Mphasis have also followed suit with campus recruitments being lower than last year in each of these cases in the colleges under consideration.

Explaining how placements with IT companies took a different turn this year, Mr Jitendra Marchino, Member, Placements Committee, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies says, "Very few dotcoms came to campus this year. Though technology companies turned up in good numbers, they mostly absorbed systems graduates unlike last year when a lot of general marketing graduates were picked up by them".

Top infotech recruiters go easy on management placementsMr Marchino adds that the campus saw several FMCG companies and Banks pursue recruitment aggressively. Moreover, general marketing students also seem to have preferred the traditional sectors this time around.

"There has been a definite slowdown in campus recruitment by IT companies so far and there are a couple of reasons for this", says Mr Lokendra Tomar, Co-founder, Coolavenues.com, a site which specialises in campus placements."First of all there is the slowdown in IT spend by US companies, secondly several companies appear to be between projects but most importantly, IT companies appear to have shifted focus from recruitment of general systems analyst type professionals to specialised professionals who can take their consulting and branding efforts forward." The companies prefer "lateral hiring" when it comes to specialised professionals, according to Mr Tomar, which rules out the campus candidates.

"We have certainly not ruled out campus recruitments and neither will we reduce them this year but we have gotten very selective" says Mr Ramesh Padmanabhan of Mumbai-based Mphasis which has not recruited any graduates from XLRI or Bajaj this year, though the company had recruited a total of five candidates from both these institutes last year.

Interestingly, Dr H Santhanam, Professor in Charge of Placements at the Mumbai-based Jamnalal Institute of Management Studies adds, "Students were a lot more optimistic about prospects in the IT sector last year but they seem unsure now and are once again moving towards traditional sectors".Though initial indications on the campus placement scenario indicate a slowdown in IT recruitment, the phenomenon is possibly just indicative of a larger scenario as the IT sector reorganises itself to meet global demands and makes a conscious attempt to move up the value chain.