Chennai : With Campus recruitment season round the corner, a survey with about 125 recruiters indicates there will be a considerable drop in student intake when compared to last year. 56% recruiters said that the number of students that they will hire from campus placements will be lesser in 2013.

Firstnaukri.com is a naukri.com portal and is exclusively targeted towards entry level hiring. This survey was conducted with recruiters across sectors to gauge an understanding on the campus hiring outlook for 2013-14 and the key challenges faced by them on-campus.

When we further segregate the survey, among recruiters who hire only Management Graduates then all of them said that they will visit lesser campuses and will hire lower number of students in 2013.  Recruiters who hire only engineers however had a split in view. About 50% said that there will be a drop in campus hiring numbers and the other half said that they will maintain their hiring levels.

Software sector has the highest intake of students from campus. When we asked recruiters from the IT sector about their Campus Hiring plans then 53% of them said that campus hiring will not be affected because of the ongoing slowdown, while 47% said that they will lower their intake in 2013 when compared to last year.

Commenting on the finding, Deepali Singh, Business Head, Firstnaukri.com says “Amid the economic uncertainty and uncertain outlook, most companies are cautious about their campus hiring and do not want to go overboard. However, as the survey suggests companies will still continue to hire but may lower numbers when compared to earlier years.”

Key challenges faced by recruiter’s on- campus:  When we asked recruiters on the difficulties faced by them on campus then lack of adequate communication and written skills tops the list with 39% voting for the same. About 23% said that students have very high salary expectations from companies which is difficult to be met.

Methodology: The Firstnaukri.com Campus Hiring Outlook survey is an e-mail survey which is sent out to the registered clients of Firstnaukri.com. The results are compiled using statistical and analytical techniques.