A field-by-field register schema, the denominator problem that makes the same batch look like three different results, how to report salary without an outlier doing all the work, and the report structure that answers every reader at once.
The annual placement report is the only artefact most people outside the cell will ever see, and it is read by audiences with incompatible interests: management wants a trend, accreditation wants definitions and evidence, prospective students and parents want a realistic expectation, and recruiters want to know who else hires here. Almost all placement-report trouble comes from one avoidable thing — a percentage published without the denominator that produced it. This guide covers the internal document and its arithmetic. How external ranking and accreditation frameworks define outcomes, and how to keep one data spine that satisfies all of them, is on the NIRF placement ranking page.
| Reader | What they actually want | What annoys them |
|---|---|---|
| Management and governing body | Trend against previous years, and which branches or programmes moved | A single headline number with no comparison basis |
| Accreditation and ranking submissions | Definitions, cohort boundaries, and evidence for each count | Numbers that do not reconcile with the register or with last year's submission |
| Prospective students and parents | A realistic expectation for someone like them, by branch | A highest-package headline that describes one person |
| Recruiters | Who else recruits here, at what level, and what happened to those hires | A logo wall with no roles, no counts and no dates |
The report is not a document you write; it is a query you run. That only works if the register carries the fields below, captured during the season rather than reconstructed after it. Keep one row per student for status and one row per offer for outcomes — students with multiple offers break any single-table design.
| Field | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Roll number, name, programme, branch, admission year | The cohort key. Admission year, not just graduating year, because cohort questions are asked both ways. |
| Expected and actual graduation year | Students who take an extra year change which cohort they belong to. Record both. |
| Registered for placement (yes/no) and date | The basis of the most-used denominator. Without a date you cannot reconstruct who was in scope when. |
| Eligible for placement under institutional policy (yes/no, reason) | Different from registered. A student may be eligible and choose not to register. |
| Opted out, with reason | Higher studies, competitive examination, family business, self-employment, medical. This is the field that makes an honest denominator possible. |
| Final placement status | Placed, unplaced, opted out, higher studies, entrepreneurship, not traceable. |
| Consent to publish name/photograph/package | Personal data. Recorded consent, per use, or you publish aggregates only. |
| Personal email and phone that survive graduation | Every outcome question after graduation depends on this field having been captured before it. |
| Field | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Offer ID, student roll number, drive ID | Links the offer to the drive that produced it, and lets you count offers and students separately. |
| Employer legal name and sector | Legal name, not the brand — subsidiaries and group companies are counted separately in most submissions. |
| Role title and work location | The two facts every prospective student asks about and most reports omit. |
| On-campus, pool, or off-campus | Outcome attribution. Off-campus offers belong in the register but should be labelled. |
| Fixed pay, variable pay, one-time components, stipend during training | Recorded separately. Collapsing them into one figure is the origin of most salary-reporting disputes. |
| Offer date, acceptance or decline, date of decision | Offers made and offers accepted are different numbers, and both get asked for. |
| Service agreement or bond: amount and duration | Material to any honest description of the offer. |
| Evidence held: offer letter reference and location in the file | The difference between a number and a defensible number. |
| Joining confirmed (yes/no/unknown) and date | The number recruiters care about most, and the one almost no report contains. |
Placement percentage is meaningless without stating what it is a percentage of, and the four common denominators can differ enormously for the same cohort. The example below uses invented round numbers purely to show the arithmetic — it is not data about any institution and is not a benchmark of any kind.
| Basis | Count | Placed | Percentage | What it honestly means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total students in the graduating cohort | 600 | 390 | 65% | The broadest measure. Includes students who never sought placement. |
| Students eligible under institutional policy | 540 | 390 | 72% | Excludes those barred by academic or participation rules. |
| Students registered for placement | 460 | 390 | 85% | Excludes those who opted out for higher studies, examinations or self-employment. |
| Students who appeared in at least one drive | 430 | 390 | 91% | The narrowest common basis, and the one most often quoted without saying so. |
Salary is where placement reports lose credibility fastest, because the numbers that are easiest to publish are the least representative. Three disciplines fix most of it.
A single unusually large offer moves an average substantially and a median barely at all. If you publish an average, publish the median beside it — the gap between them is itself informative, and readers who understand the difference will assume the worst if only the average appears.
Variable pay, joining bonuses, retention components, relocation and the notional value of benefits inflate a headline figure without changing what a graduate is paid monthly. Report fixed pay as the primary figure and state what the total includes.
A small number of bands with the count of offers in each tells a prospective student more than any single figure, and is far harder to misread. Add the count behind every statistic so a band of two offers is visibly a band of two offers.
For every count in the report there should be a folder you could hand to an auditor without preparation. This is not bureaucracy for its own sake — it is what lets a new TPO stand behind a predecessor's numbers, and what prevents the reconciliation crisis that arrives with the first accreditation visit.
Academic year, graduating cohort covered, data-freeze date, and the name and designation of the person who compiled and approved it.
The first content section, not an annexure. Define placed, eligible, registered, opted out, and every salary term you use later. Every dispute this report will ever cause is prevented here.
Headline counts with denominators, this year against the previous two, and a short narrative on what changed and why.
Counts and percentages per branch, with cohort sizes shown. This is the section prospective students actually use.
Organisations that recruited, offers made per organisation, roles, first-time versus returning recruiters, and modes used.
Median and distribution by programme, with the caveats above printed alongside rather than in a footnote.
Higher studies, competitive examinations, entrepreneurship and family enterprise, with counts. A cohort is not divided into placed and failed.
Training delivered, contact hours, workshops, mock cycles and the assessment results behind them. This is where the cell demonstrates the work that produced the outcomes.
What did not work, stated plainly, and what the cell will change. A report with no negative findings reads as marketing and is treated as such.
Drive-wise summary, recruiter list with dates, and the definitions used in any external submission made from the same data.
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These guides describe process and judgement, not recruiter-specific criteria. Eligibility rules, test patterns, compensation and hiring dates change every cycle and differ between campuses — always work from the Job Announcement Form and test invite you actually receive, and from the current official framework documents for any ranking or accreditation submission.