At a time when AI is reshaping the worldwide jobs market, a brand new survey has discovered that prime tech employers like Apple and Nvidia are more and more hiring graduates from India’s lesser-known instructional establishments.
A median of 34 per cent (roughly one-third) of staff at Zoho, Apple, and Nvidia stated that that they had graduated from Tier-3 schools within the nation, in line with a brand new survey carried out by Blind, an app the place verified working professionals can work together with one another anonymously. Tier-3 schools don’t embody elite establishments such because the IITs and IIMs of the nation.
The survey of 1,602 Indian professionals was performed between September 17 to 24, 2025 through the app to look at how a techie’s school background influences their profession outcomes. Most of the respondents who labored at corporations resembling Zoho, Apple, Nvidia, SAP, and PayPal stated that school had had no affect on their careers.
Based mostly on the Nationwide Institutional Rating Framework (NIRF) 2025, the universities have been grouped into Tier 1 (IITs, IISc, prime IIMs, BITS Pilani), Tier 2 (NITs, DTU, Jadavpur College, and related), Tier 3 (different state or personal universities), and Tier 4 (comprising abroad establishments).
The findings of the Blind survey sign that college students who don’t get accepted into elite Indian universities should still have a future profession in international tech companies. It additionally exhibits that whereas conventional monetary companies like Goldman Sachs or Visa should still place worth on school names, main tech companies are likely to prioritise expertise in the case of hiring.
“Basically, folks from IIT/IIIT/NIT do higher within the interviews. 50 per cent of the screened candidates from IIT/IIIT/NIT normally find yourself getting a suggestion. The opposite lot, the success price is round 20 per cent,” a Salesforce worker was quoted as saying within the report. One other Goldman Sachs worker opined, “Firms aren’t simply IITs anymore, they’re searching grads from small cities and Tier 3 schools. They’re actually betting that with some coaching, anybody can change into a tech rockstar.”
The survey additionally comes amid mounting issues of a deteriorating job market, particularly within the tech sector which is seeing a wave of AI-fueled layoffs. Tech trade leaders resembling Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have predicted that AI will trigger 50 per cent of entry-level roles to vanish within the subsequent 5 years. Others like Nvidia boss Jensen Huang consider that AI will make some jobs out of date whereas concurrently creating new ones.
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Different findings of the survey
A majority of the respondents from Tier 1 and Tier 2 schools agreed that campus recruitment formed their careers greater than another issue. Nevertheless, 59 per cent of Tier 3 alumni and 45 per cent of Tier 4 alumni consider that school was not more than one other line on a résumé, as per the survey.
Notably, conventional multinational corporations like Goldman Sachs, Visa, Atlassian, Oracle, and Google usually rent closely by way of campus placements. But, a mean of 18 per cent of staff at these companies stated that they got here from Tier-3 schools.
Graduating from an elite college might not assure the next wage both. Solely 15 per cent of Tier 3 alumni reported a powerful profit from their schooling whereas 74 per cent of whole respondents stated that school names helped solely early on or by no means.
Greater than half of abroad graduates (53 per cent) additionally felt school had little or no impact on their earnings, as per the survey. These findings are in keeping with different experiences as effectively. As an example, a latest Forbes evaluation discovered that over 90 per cent of corporations see higher hiring outcomes after they prioritise worker expertise over levels.