New Delhi: Automotive companies are thronging engineering college and B-school campuses this year like never before to scoop up young talent.
For these companies, not only are the campus hiring numbers higher this year but even the number of profiles has jumped, said senior industry executives and placement cell officials at the Indian Institutes of Technology like Guwahati and Mandi.
With India emerging as one of the fastest growing markets for passenger vehicles in the world in recent times, automakers have been renewing their bets, triggering demand for talent across multiple functions including engineering, electronics, product development and operations management.
Mercedes-Benz, the German luxury-car maker, is looking at hiring management as well as graduate trainees from the batch of 2024. “This year, we will be hiring around 15-20% more candidates when compared to the previous year,” Mercedes-Benz India chief executive Santosh Iyer said.
Mercedes-Benz is eyeing recruitments from campuses to groom them in new technologies and platforms and make them ready for future roles. The automobile manufacturer is already in the process of hiring campus talent with data analytics, electrification, industry 5.0 skills. The company aims to train new hires to develop ecommerce channels and create back-end systems with data mining & science, among others. “As the No.1 luxury car brand in India, our focus is on ensuring that we are hiring the candidates with an ‘orientation towards luxury’,” said Iyer.
Market leader Maruti Suzuki, which was enthused by record sales last fiscal year, has decided to scale up hirings to be future ready. “With the expansion of our business, we have increased our campus intake,” executive board member Rajesh Uppal said.
This year, Maruti Suzuki is likely to hire about 1,000 people from campuses. Uppal said: “A lot of work around new technology introduction and digital transformation is happening across the organisation for which we require talent and new skills.”
In recent years, Mahindra & Mahindra has added new IITs and some upcoming MBA institutes as well as other colleges to its list of campus for hiring. “Our focus has been on creating a healthy pipeline of diverse talent across functions,” chief HR officer Rajeshwar Tripathi said.
In 2022, Mahindra tapped into the entry level talent pool through more than 50 engineering and MBA institutes. “Our average intake has been in the range of 500-600,” he said.
In 2023, Hero MotoCorp partnered with the Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University to hire diploma engineers from multiple campuses across the National Capital Region.
“We had 40% more campus recruits than the year before. Most of our campus hires were mechanical, electrical, electronics, mechatronics, computer science engineers, and MBAs,” said a spokesperson at Hero MotoCorp.
Meanwhile, the local unit of Korean auto company Hyundai Motor is looking at fulfilling 1,000plus prospective opportunities across cadre, level and role to support business operations/outcomes this season. Charles Walter, group head HR at Hyundai India, said the company is looking at a mix of campus and experienced talent. From campuses, the company is looking at hiring talent from engineering and management backgrounds.
Campuses echo the same enthusiasm from auto companies. In 2023, offers from auto companies for core engineering profiles have increased at IIT-Guwahati compared to last year, faculty-in charge for the Centre for Career Development Lalit Pandey said. The hirings were for roles like core engineer, design engineer, business analyst, data engineer and software development engineer.
Students at IIT-Mandi are also getting many offers from automakers. “Compared to the last two years, this year the number of auto companies hired from IIT-Mandi is more. This may be due to the recession effect due to covid has finally come to an end,” said Tushar Jain, advisor, career & placement cell, IIT-Mandi.
