Hybrid placements are becoming a norm at leading colleges, B-schools

aloksaideep@gmail.com | Jul 22 2024 , 11:49 am

Much like hybrid working, hybrid hiring seems to be here to stay in the post-Covid world. Leading colleges and B-schools, including the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM), which were forced to switch to a fully online hiring model during the pandemic, have now made hybrid placements the norm.

Despite post-Covid normalcy fully restored, almost all these institutes are keeping the online recruitment option open for hiring companies in addition to offline mode, placement sources at IITs including Delhi, Bombay, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Kanpur and IIMs at Ahmedabad, Indore and Kozhikode told ET.

Reasons: Many recruiters prefer the online mode as they save on time and travel costs; for institutes too, the online route is easier to coordinate.

Also, institutes which are at a locational disadvantage, away from main metros, making travel far more cumbersome for recruiters, now get more opportunities in line with their counterparts in more central locations like Delhi, Bombay and Bengaluru.

"Online route is preferred especially in case of institutes that are in difficult locations. It is also preferred by recruiters in case of exigency and sometimes it is just convenient," said Himanshu Rai, director, IIM Indore.

Also, due to Covid-19 all good institutes have pivoted their infrastructure to a virtual environment for hiring, teaching, etc, Rai said.

A handful of recruiters did hire through online mode even before the pandemic. However the number of recruiters opting for the online mode has shot up across IIMs and IITs.
According to IIM Kozhikode director Debashis Chatterjee, online hiring is a behavioural issue.

"Things have been getting easier for the last two years and a chunk of companies now want to recruit online because they are comfortable with it," he said.
But the companies seriously invested in hiring talent will stick to the offline route.

"Functional modes of recruitment can be done online, real in-depth issues require in-person interactions," he said.
At IIT Roorkee, compared with 5-10% of recruiters that would prefer to conduct the hiring process online pre-pandemic, about 20% prefer to take that route now, said Ashish Singh, member, placement and internship cell.

But many, especially those offering higher packages, prefer face-to-face conversations to evaluate students better, said Singh.
In the case of in-person campus hiring, some institutes lose out recruiters due to their location compared to other campuses which are centrally located. This apart, there are sometimes other factors at play. In the past years, IIT Madras faced disruption in placement season due to heavy rains and floods. Even IIT Guwahati and IIM Shillong felt the impact of the unrest due to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) back in 2019.

A mix of online and offline hiring from campuses turns out a blessing in such situations.