The 2024 and 2025 placement seasons were difficult for many colleges. IT services hiring volumes dropped significantly from their 2022 peak, startup offers were rescinded in large numbers, and placement rates at colleges outside the top tier fell in ways that were hard to explain to students and management.
2026 is a different picture, but not a return to 2022. Understanding what is actually happening in the fresher market this year matters for how you structure your outreach and set expectations with students.
IT Services: Volume Is Back, But CTC Has Not Moved
TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Capgemini, and Cognizant are all hiring freshers again at close to pre-slowdown volumes. The national assessments are running, the mass hiring drives are back on schedules, and joining backlogs from 2024 have largely cleared.
What has not changed: the CTC bands. Entry-level offers in the 3.36 to 4.5 LPA range remain the standard. The differentiation between general and smart hiring bands exists but the bulk of offers fall in the lower range.
For placement cells, this means IT services is again a reliable source of volume placements. For a batch of 300 engineering students, expecting 80 to 120 offers from the large IT services companies is reasonable if your outreach and student readiness are in order.
What placement officers should tell students: joining timelines from these companies can still stretch to six to eight months after the offer. Students with IT services offers should continue appearing for other drives if they want to hedge, depending on how long they can wait before joining.
Mid-Size Tech: The Most Interesting Opportunity in 2026
Companies in the 500 to 5,000 employee range in technology, specifically those working on SaaS, fintech, logistics technology, and healthtech, are hiring freshers at significantly better CTCs than IT services and with shorter joining timelines.
Companies like Zepto, Groww, CRED, Lenskart, Meesho, Porter, and their competitors in similar categories are consistently hiring engineering freshers at 8 to 18 LPA for technical roles and are willing to visit campuses outside the IIT and NIT tier if the match is right.
The challenge for placement cells is that these companies do not run standardised campus drives in the way TCS does. They respond to warm outreach, care about specific skills, and make decisions quickly. A college that can show them three students with strong GitHub portfolios is more likely to get a visit than one sending a generic batch statistics email.
BFSI: Strong Volumes, Especially for Non-Engineering Colleges
Banking, insurance, and fintech companies are among the most consistent hirers of freshers in 2026. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak, Bajaj, and a growing list of digital lending and payment companies are running structured fresher programmes.
For commerce, BBA, and MBA colleges, BFSI should be the first priority sector for outreach, not an afterthought. The joining timelines are fast (typically three to four months post-offer), the process is organised, and the companies return year after year to campuses where the process was smooth.
For engineering colleges, the BFSI opportunity is in fintech. Companies in payments, lending, and insurance technology want engineers who can work in product, data, and platform roles. The pitch to these companies needs to emphasise analytical skills and an interest in financial products, not just coding ability.
Manufacturing and Core: Strong, But Relationship-Driven
The infrastructure build-out happening across India means core engineering companies are in a genuine hiring cycle. L&T, Godrej, Mahindra, and a range of auto and infrastructure companies are looking for mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers.
The issue for placement cells trying to reach these companies without existing relationships is that they are highly relationship-driven. A college that has been sending good candidates to a manufacturing company for three years gets a call in October. A college reaching out cold in December gets an email back saying they will consider it for next year.
If you do not have existing relationships in core engineering companies, the best path in 2026 is through alumni. Find alumni who are now in management roles at these companies and ask for an introduction to HR. One warm introduction is worth ten cold emails.
What This Means for Your 2026 Placement Strategy
Plan for a mixed sector approach. No single sector is large enough to absorb your full batch, and over-relying on IT services leaves you exposed if they slow again.
Start company outreach in September rather than October or November. The companies with the best offers are filling their campus slots in the first quarter of the academic year.
Build a student readiness programme in August and September that specifically covers the assessments used by your target companies. TCS, Infosys, and Wipro publish enough information about their hiring assessments that targeted preparation is possible.
Verfolia's live hiring feed pulls fresher job openings from across India every morning, so you can see in real time which companies are actively hiring in your students' domains. This gives you a live signal for which companies are worth prioritising in your outreach rather than working from last year's list.