From IIT to Facebook

IIT Kharagpur has clicked with Facebook this recruitment season. The social networking site has picked up four students from the institute this year, up from one last year. Arun Dobriyal, Ashish Kumar Yadav and Vighnesh Vadhani, final-year students of the dual-degree course in computer science, and Radhika Mittal, a final-year student of the four-year BTech computer science course, will be joining Facebook once they get their degrees next year. The students have been offered a salary of about $1,25,000 a year (around Rs 64 lakh a year according to Tuesday’s value of the rupee), almost the same as the salary offered last year. The next-highest package was $1,20,000 a year, offered by Microsoft, Redmond. “This shows that our students have been performing well,” said S.K. Srivastava, the professor in charge of training and placement on the campus. “Last year, they had recruited only one student from here. The figure has jumped to four.” Of the 1,659 students who registered for placement, 310 have already found jobs in the first five days of interviews.