Everything You Need To Know About Masai School Placements

Masai’s hiring partners are often surprised, and in awe, when they learn that most of the students they’ve hired come from non-tech backgrounds.

And when they ask us – “What’s the secret sauce? How do we manage to train almost anyone irrespective of their educational qualifications into a developer in just 30 weeks?”

The honest answer to this question is that our students work really hard for 7 months under the guidance of our instructors, where-in they undergo an intense military-style curriculum that helps them learn different facets of programming, and emerge as successful developers. 

A typical Masai student would have spent about 1000 hours writing code in just 7 months, which is more time than what an average engineering student spends in 4 years! 

But once they complete their 6th Unit, i.e their 30-week journey with Masai, enter the Placement Team. 

What’s the role of the Placement team? What do they do? How do they do it? 

In this blog, we will learn everything there is to know about placements at Masai. Let’s get started, first with our placement statistics. 

Masai School Placements Statistics

As of December 2021 more than 500 students have graduated as developers from Masai School with an average placement rate of 96.2%, and here’s a batch wise breakdown – 

Our last 7 batches have achieved a 100% Placement rate, and with our current momentum, we are hoping to continue this streak with our next batches. 

When we say that students from all backgrounds can become software engineers, we’re pretty serious. 54% of the students graduating out of Masai have come from non-CS domains. 

Our curriculum is designed such that almost anyone irrespective of their academic or professional background can turn themselves into capable Software Developers. 

How well-paid are these placement opportunities?

According to the Pay After Placement agreement at Masai, the threshold income for a student which marks the beginning of repayment is Rs. 5 LPA. If the student gets a lesser package or doesn’t get placed at all, they don’t need to make any payment towards the institute. 

However, the average annual package (CTC) among all our batches till now stands beyond the minimum threshold at 7.5 LPA. And as the tech market grows in India, these numbers are only going to take flight. 

The boom of tech-based startups in India has expanded the horizons of the employment scope, now the workforce needs to build the required skills and get on the bandwagon of innovation and development. 

What is the Placement Process at Masai School? 

What are the factors enabling us to achieve such high, unprecedented placement success?

Let’s look at them one by one to understand the whole placement process and how the different units at Masai work together to produce such astonishing results.

Finding the right companies for you (BD Team)

This is one of the most important cogs in the wheel of Placement at any institute. At Masai School, the partnership is an ongoing process. We receive partner inquiries on a regular basis and then the B.D team takes over and starts filtering companies that are fit to become our hiring partners.

The screening process requires a company to meet a list of standards such as:

• Culture in the company
• Team size
• Scope for learning, skill-building, and expanding one’s domain in the company
• Where is the company headed? What’s the future?

Only upon testing against these metrics are the companies onboarded. Our team delves deep into each and every detail of the company and the industry they belong to before making decisions.

Placement Orientation

Next in line is the orientation process with students which usually takes place 10-14 days before graduation. 

Here, our team shares the list of companies/recruiters onboarded in the particular placement cycle with students. They’re also provided with other intricate details about their possible job roles and the software industry, in general.

This is when students start analyzing which companies and positions would be the best fit for them, what’s going to be their career trajectory, and so on from the perspective of a professional.

Emphasis is given on the development of soft skills and other employability skills in students. They have mock interviews as well to make them fully prepared for the upcoming job interviews.

Placement Kickstart

At this stage, our placement team is in constant touch with both the students as well as our hiring partners, ensuring that both sides have seamless communication. 

From scouting and shortlisting companies to scheduling interviews to collecting feedback, and rolling out job offers – Our Placements team takes care of the Placement process – end to end. 

Performance reports of the students and the feedback received from our Hiring partners are meticulously tracked and shared with the curriculum team to ensure that we can evolve our curriculum and match the requirements of the tech industry.

On average, it takes just 3-4 days for a company to shortlist, interview students, and roll out offers. 

Offer Acceptance and Next Steps

When a student clears the interview, and before they receive their offer letters, our team vets the Appointment letter for any gaps, and sends it to the student only when they are completely satisfied with the offering. 

Our support doesn’t just end here. After a student has settled in their new jobs, our Placement team connects with them to check if everything is fine and provide any support needed. 

We also review the student’s experience with our Placement partners to see if our students are fitting well into the company’s culture and ensure they have a swift transition into the working industry.

Note: We understand very well that it takes efforts from both the student and the company to come together for a successful onboarding procedure and overall placement. So, if we get enough negative feedback about a company’s work culture from our students, that company is not considered in our next placement cycles.

What happens if a student doesn’t find placement after graduating from Masai School?

Or What would happen if a student loses their job due to some reason? 

Thrive Program

Despite the job-oriented curriculum we have, a student might not be able to execute the learnings properly in interviews and may face rejections, or may end up losing their jobs due to some reason. 

To tackle this challenge and ensure that no student gets left behind, Masai School started ‘Thrive’ back in august, 2020. 

How does Thrive work?

It’s a program designed to help students who aren’t able to get a job by the end of the placement cycles, or those students who have lost their jobs for reasons out of their control. 

The program aims at helping our students improve, where-in, our curriculum team works with the students to address their problems, and re-train them, thereby improving their proficiency. 

Moreover, these students also face mock interviews to better equip them for pressure situations in interviews. The placement team makes sure there are no barriers remaining as they work on honing students’ employability skills in terms of behavioral and attitudinal aspects. 

Now, it is no rocket science that consistent efforts put into something will bring dividends and that’s what happens in the Thrive program at Masai.

Case in point Ajay Paudel, who was placed as an intern with ClearTax after graduating from Masai couldn’t get a full-time role as the company held back the offer due to Covid lockdown. He got another opportunity in SpaceJoy but somehow that didn’t work either. 

Ajay then contacted the Masai team and inducted himself into the Thrive Program upon recommendation. 

Two months of rigorous practice, revision of concepts, and multiple mock interviews later, Ajay finally earned himself a full-time software developer role in GlobalLogic with a CTC of Rs. 6.32 LPA.

Here’s Ajay sharing his whole journey at Masai:

Shweta Khanna, Masai School’s AVP for Strategic Partnerships sums up the motive of Thrive with the following statement:

“We always tell the students, as long as you keep the efforts up, we will keep sharing your profiles and keep supporting you. We won’t give up – as long as you don’t give up!”

Masai’s Hiring Partners

At the moment, the tech industry in India is exploding with unicorns and soonicorns. We’re witnessing innovations and solutions in all walks of life, be it food delivery apps, money transaction apps, or even fantasy sports platforms. 

All these ventures are setting up India for a rapid economic boom in the next 5-10 years.

Masai School is contributing to this rise by providing the skilled workforce that these companies need. We have a network of over a hundred such startups & established companies that hire our students on a frequent basis.

Companies such as the likes of Dream11, ShareChat, Meesho, etc. employ Masai graduates in software developer roles offering upscale packages.

Times have changed and today, most companies prioritize hard practice-based skills, problem-solving ability, and other employability skills over just a college degree. 

Let’s see what PagarBook’s CTO Arya Adarsha Gautam has to say about it:

“Masai curriculum is designed such that its graduates come into the job with an understanding of workplace and technology practices that are simply missing from freshers hired from colleges. This experience plays a major role in the integration of the grads into the workplace culture and helps them in becoming fast-learning, independent contributors.”

Once a student enters Masai, they become a part of the family forever, and we do anything and everything to ensure our students get the best, and progress in their careers. 

With that being said, let’s go through some of the most commonly asked questions by our students in their Placement process – 

Q. In how many companies can we sit for placements? 

Our students can sit for as many companies as they wish, but if they secure an offer letter from one company, they cannot sit for more companies. 

Q. Suppose I don’t get an offer but have been shortlisted in some interviews. Can I sit for more companies? 

Yes. Until the time our students haven’t secured an offer letter, they are allowed to sit for as many companies as they desire. 

Q. Can I reject jobs that are below 5LPA? 

Yes. Our Placements Team will find enough and more opportunities for our students. The student is not required to pay back until their income is 5LPA or above. 

Q. If I want a job in a particular location, is it possible? 

No. Most of our hiring partners have offices in either metropolitan cities or major cities of India, and you would need to relocate to the desired location if needed. 

Q. How much time does it take for a company to finish its hiring process? 

It takes about 3-5 days for a company to start rolling out offers. A typical placement process starts with students attempting coding rounds, after which they are shortlisted for technical and HR interviews. Upon successfully completing these interviews, the students are extended offer letters. 

Q. What happens if I get a job offer, and I reject it? 

Once a student has secured an offer letter that pays them above 5LPA, we recommend them not to reject the offers hoping to get a better offer. However, if the student chooses to do so, they can, but they will have to secure a job in under 45 days, or they will need to pay their complete PAP amount.