Salbari (Sukna), April 5: Gone are the days when Siliguri was considered to be just another sleepy north Bengal town on the way to Darjeeling.

The town has metamorphosed over the years and seems to have become the latest catch for information technology majors from south India, thanks to the efforts of the Siliguri Institute of Technology (SIT), a prestigious private institution at Salbari, some 18 km north of Siliguri.

Since the last two years the IT school is making its present felt in the software industry with freshers making it big during the campus recruitment conducted by infotech giants.

SIT principal H. Bhowmik said: “This is our second batch since the inception of the college in 1999. This year alone some nine IT companies, mostly from Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, have held both on and off-campus interviews. More than 32 students have been selected through spot recruitment by IT majors like TCS, Accentura, Kenbey and Accel-ICIM Ltd this year. IT firms like HCL, Starling Infotech, Alumnus and Pradan are in the queue to hold the interviews,” said Bhowmik.

“Another Bombay-based firm, Crompton Greaves, has also contacted us and called up our students for off-campus interviews. Last year 29 IT companies had visited our institute and 60 per cent of our students had been absorbed,” said vice principal Ashis Kumar Nath.

Explaining what makes Siliguri, which figured nowhere in the IT map so far, suddenly transform itself into a recruitment hub, Nath said: “Besides conventional academic curricula, since the last six months we have introduced several extra curricular sessions. This has been done to groom up each student to face the competitive job market. We hire regular services of the consultancy agencies like Ma-foi and Nico Internet Venture Ltd, which arrange workshops for our students,” said Nath.

Qualities like communication skill, reasoning power, general knowledge and psychometrical power get polished with professional help from the second year of the academic session.

The students at SIT are also excited about the effort put in by their college to shape their careers. “We are really grateful to our faculty for how the way they have designed extra-curricular modules. This helps us face our interviews and recruitment tests with confidence,” said Madhumita Sarkar who has recently been offered a job with TCS.