Disclaimer: Not all IT offers have been explicitly mentioned in the article. All information has been sourced directly from the PU.
The EPC interviewed a member of the Placement Unit (PU), Divyam Sharma, the Internship Coordinator of Semester I, 2020-21, regarding the recent internship season.
NUMBER OF OFFERS:
A total of 204 internship offers were made this year. The number of companies this year, across all sectors, was the ‘highest ever in the history of BITS Pilani.’ Divyam said that it reflected a positive change in the companies’ policies and the relationship that the PU has been building with companies. He added that although a few companies dropped out because of the COVID situation, the PU was able to cover up by calling more companies with a similar brand value and stipend. He also mentioned that this year they had partnered with Upraised for Associate Product Manager (APM) internships. Upraised is an organisation that partners with companies and universities to help the former fill their role-specific APM requirements by training the selected students for specific roles in advance. Two students from BITS Pilani were selected this year by Upraised.
STIPEND:
The average stipend and median stipends were ₹68,150 and ₹50,000, respectively, with the highest stipend being ₹2,00,000. Divyam said that the average stipend has significantly increased this year; the average stipend last year was approximately ₹60,000. He commented that the IT sector had ‘kept up with the boom,’ and there was no dearth of IT companies coming on campus. The core sector took a slight hit, but they still made a decent number of their offers. He reasoned that this was because the IT companies have been flourishing in the work-from-home environment while the core companies require their employees to be present on-site.
The PU has been able to add three new companies to the list of core companies: Bengaluru Airport City Limited (BACL), which came specifically for Civil Engineering students; Tata Steel, which came for Mechanical Engineering students; and Boston Scientific, which came for EEE, ENI, Mechanical, Chemical, and Civil Engineering students. When asked whether any companies had backed out given the current pandemic, he responded that there were no big companies that had backed out. He added that even if a company offering ₹70,000–₹80,000 backed out, they were able to cover it with new additions, such as Wells Fargo, offering an IT stipend of ₹1.2L; Cohesity, offering a stipend of ₹90,000; Motorq, an IT startup, offering a stipend of ₹1.2L.
CHANGE IN POLICIES:
When asked whether any changes were made in the rules and policies of the PU, considering some students might not have adequate resources due to the current situation, Divyam answered that all the necessary resources were available on the internet. There were no changes as such in any existing rule. When questioned about the policy of not allowing students who take up summer internships to register for Practice School in the first semester, he explained that it was a long-standing rule between the PU and the Practice School Division (PSD) and that it was mainly about the concerns of the PSD with ‘logistics’. The students in question are not allowed to register for PS-II in the first semester to avoid a possible overlap between the summer internships and PS-II and ensure a uniform number of students in both semesters. The rule was decided upon by BITS Management and the PSD a long time ago.
CHANGES IN THE ONLINE SEMESTER:
When asked about changes in the approach of calling companies, testing, and screening students due to the semester being online, Divyam said that third-party tools were used to catch any form of malpractice. The companies, too, had scaled up their resources to partner with other companies to monitor the students giving interviews online. The quality of the questions asked was similar to the interviews on campus. He mentioned that there were some ‘ups and downs’ in the online interviews due to some students having internet issues. Even if a student had to drop an interview in between because of such problems, the interview was rescheduled for that student.
RESUME BUILDING:
Divyam said that resume building is essential and one must be very thorough while writing a resume as it reflects a “student’s personality”. Students should also focus on building a skillset in their domain of interest and they should start doing this right from their second year. They should stay in touch with their immediate seniors who have landed good jobs and great offers in their domain of interest. When asked to comment on the grade requirement, he said that a CGPA above seven is necessary to be eligible for the interview process and the rest is up to the student’s skills.
In conclusion, he said that the internship season has been good and now it is up to the students to perform well at the internships. A good conversion of the internship offers to full-time employment is expected. He asserted that there would be ‘better seasons than this in the upcoming years.’
