Placement rate at PEC improves

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 5

Punjab Engineering College (PEC) observed a 28.05 per cent increase in the total number of placement offers this year, said officials. The minimum cap (cut-off) to become eligible for placement has also been removed.

The Office of Centre for Information and Media (CIM) organised an online session with PEC Director Dr Dheeraj Sanghi and Head, Career Development and Guidance Centre, Dr JD Sharma.

“In 2019-20, PEC observed 28.05 per cent increase in the total number of placements. A total of 461 offers have been rolled out to the 2019-20 batch (as compared with 360 last year) through campus placements. A total of 145 companies participated in the placement session,” said Sanghi. He said despite the pandemic, PEC had improved in the NIRF rankings from 78 last year to 68 thsi year. “The average salary was recorded at Rs10.2 lakh per annum, an increase of 8.5 per cent from last year (Rs9.4 lakh). Pre-placement offers (PPO) increased from 83 to 89, a positive growth of 7.2 per cent,” added Sanghi.

“The highest salary offered to the 2020 batch is recorded at Rs42 lakh (per annum) by Microsoft and the average package in 2019-20 has been 10.2 lakh.”

Coding sector popular

The highest number of offers was made in the coding sector, followed by core companies, analytics and consulting firms. “According to the special placement drive (SPD) from June 1 to June 30, there were more than 22 companies that conducted the virtual process for placements in a short span of time,” said Sharma.

Nearly 83 per cent of students have joined the companies and the remaining are in the process of waiting to hear from their employers. “We are still continuing with the 2020 placements till September 2020. Internships also witnessed a boom with more than 75 partner companies and several new companies on board. The highest internship stipend was recorded at Rs1.5 lakh per month. A total of 26 students were offered international internships for six months,” Sharma said.

Special focus on students scoring less CGPA

“PEC became the first institute to award degrees to 2020 batch pass-outs in order to help them move forward with their jobs and joining. We have started early training batches, lowered eligibility criteria for placements and are making special efforts for the students, who scored lower CGPAs. This is coupled with free online courses being made available to all students of PEC on reputed online platforms,” said Sanghi.