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Punjab Engineering College witnesses 28% more campus placements this year
Highest package of ₹42 lakh offered by Microsoft to 8 students, same as last year
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh, has witnessed a 28% increase in the total number of jobs offered during the placement drive this year.
A total of 145 companies, including Microsoft, Arcesium, Sales Force, JP Morgan, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Airbus, Texas Instruments, Mastercard and Amazon, have rolled out 461 offers to the students of the 2019-20 batch (as compared to 360 last year). The placement drive will continue till September 30.
Eight students have been offered the highest package of ₹42 lakh per annum (LPA) by Microsoft. Last year, five students were offered the same package by the same company. The highest package on offer to the 2017-18 batch was ₹37 LPA.
The average package offered was recorded at ₹10.2 LPA, an increase from last year’s 9.4 LPA. Pre-placement offers, too, increased from 83 to 89.
PEC director Dheeraj Sanghi said, “Earlier, only those students with above 6 CGPA were allowed to sit for placements. This year, all those who completed their academic credits regardless of CGPA could sit for placements as everyone with a degree from PEC deserves to be considered for placements.”
Students from the electronics and communication engineering (ECE) and computer science engineering branches got the highest package offers. ECE was able to clinch the ₹42-LPA package, a significant upgrade from last year’s ₹19.96 LPA.
The highest package offered to the students of civil engineering was ₹17.5 LPA, an improvement from last year’s ₹10.8 LPA. Meanwhile, the highest package offered to both mechanical and production engineering branches was ₹17.5 LPA and ₹14.0 LPA respectively, a drop from last year’s ₹21 LPA.
Coding jobs most in-demand
PEC placement in-charge Dr JD Sharma said, “44% of all jobs were related to coding. Core jobs formed 25% of all offers while 13% of the jobs were from the analytics sector.” Consulting, operations and finance were relatively less popular with just 10%, 6% and 2% of all jobs on offers, respectively.
Only 14 students excused themselves from placements this year to pursue higher education. In the two previous batches of 2018-2019 and 2017-2018, 36 and 43 students, respectively, had opted to pursue higher studies after graduation.
32% jobs went to girls
Only 32% of the total job offers went to girl students. Mechanical engineering, a branch not very popular among girls, saw just 6% placement among girls. In the electrical engineering branch, on the other hand, 40% jobs were offered to girls. Certain recruiters—RBS, NXP, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs—specially hired more females for better gender ratio.
Virtual placements also held
Keeping the pandemic in mind, 22 companies conducted virtual placements, most of them from the pharma, healthcare, investment banking and insurance sectors. Companies like United Airlines and CollegeDunia, which had earlier revoked their offers due to Covid, also took students on board in separate job profiles.
