Highest Package In Campus
“I saw the advertisement in the company website and applied for the same,” says Prasanna, a 22-year old final year student of a rural college in Tamil Nadu. This small town guy has attracted none other than the iconic auto giant Rolls Royce. After nine gruelling rounds of technical tests, K Prasanna, a student of Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai, has been offered a package of $92,000 per year. Rolls Royce is into manufacturing of gas turbines, power plants, cars, marine engines, aerospace engines and rocket propulsions. This pay package tops even that of IIT Madras, where the highest offer of $90,000 was made by German oilfield services provider Schlumberger last December. Prasanna has inked a five-year bond with Rolls Royce, during which he is permitted to pursue masters and doctoral programme alongside his job. Moreover, he can also apply for patents for the research he does. It may be noted that Prasanna had failed to get through any of the campus interviews conducted by software companies this year.
“Research and development is my interest area and some day I would like to take up teaching,” he said adding this Rolls Royce offer is an opportunity to improve his knowledge in the field of engines, fuels and combustion. “I am interested in pulse detonation engines, which are used in aircraft and I would like to master in this area,” he said. A native of Periyanaickenpalayam, Coimbatore, he has been selected as a graduate trainee. Interestingly, Prasanna is one of the two non-IITians among the 120 selected from India by Rolls Royce through an open recruitment this year.
The other non-IITian is a student from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Mumbai (earlier known as Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute). When ET met Prasanna, he said of those short-listed, only 22 are pursuing engineering. “The rest of them have either completed their masters or doctorate and few are even working in industry,” he said. Moreover, 14 girls have made it to the list, in which one 36-year-old woman with a doctorate in turbo engine has been selected too. “Basically, there is no age-limit and any qualified and knowledgeable candidate could apply,” Prasanna said. Annually, the company usually recruits around 300 to 700 candidates globally.
But this year it had planned to increase the intake to 2,000 candidates and thus turned towards India for the first time. Though this is the maiden recruitment initiative in India, 3.42 lakh Indians were selected to take the tests after the initial filtration process by the company. Then came the sequence of nine technical tests, where a minimum of 5.33 aggregate was required to qualify for the next level. Prasanna made it to the final list with a total aggregate of 6.98. The questions were mainly technical and pertained to their industry.
