Campus hiring in India has a structural problem no other hiring has: the gap between offer and joining can be six months or more, and everything that happens in that gap is invisible until people do not turn up. A campus plan that ignores the gap looks fine in December and is short in June.
This checklist covers the season and the gap. For the funnel maths and the working-backwards dates, use the campus hiring planner.
Before the season — planning
Placement-cell outreach
Process design
On the day
The gap — where campus offers are actually lost
Frequently asked
When does campus hiring season start in India?+
Broadly July to December for the batch graduating the following year, with pre-placement offers going to the previous summer's interns before the season formally opens. The date that matters is yours though — work backwards from your joining date rather than forwards from the season, which is what the campus hiring planner does.
How do we reduce campus reneges?+
Shorten the gap where you can and fill it where you cannot: a signed offer with a firm joining date, a named human to contact, monthly contact from the actual team rather than HR alone, and something real in the gap — a project, a reading list, a paid pre-joining stint. Silence is what loses them.
Should we hire from tier-2 and tier-3 campuses?+
For most roles, yes, and the case is practical rather than charitable: less competition per candidate, materially higher offer-accept rates, and lower renege rates. The constraint is usually assessment — you need a process that measures capability rather than assumed prestige, which is worth building anyway.
What should the pre-placement talk cover?+
The work. Students sit through corporate videos all season and remember none of them. Twenty minutes on what an intern or graduate actually does in their first six months, delivered by someone who does that work — ideally an alum of that campus — outperforms any deck.
How many offers should we roll for the seats we need?+
Enough to cover your acceptance rate and your renege rate, both of which you should take from your own last season rather than a benchmark. The campus hiring planner computes the number from those two rates and works the timeline backwards from your joining date.