Recruiters scout for niche tech skills in IIT campuses

Students with regular profiles in less demand as companies hire for complex projects

- Devina Sengupta

Zomato is scouting for algorithm engineers at IIT campuses. High frequency trading companies are looking for statistical process control experts with high scores in quant. Consulting companies want associate product managers. And conglomerates are seeking chemical engineers for their ESG operations.

Recruiters prowling the premier engineering schools at this year's hiring season are shunning students with the regular academic profiles, instead picking to-be-engineers who have worked in complex projects. Blame AI.

"If we wanted regular coders, engineers, or get impressed with presentations, we would have relied on ChatGPT," said a partner at a leading consulting company that has hired more than 10 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology at Mumbai, Delhi, Kharagpur, and Kanpur.

"We are looking at students who can run complex projects and work in operations that require them to bring more than one skill set," the partner said.

The campus hiring season this year began on 1 December.