New Delhi, Oct 22 (IANS) Over one-third of Indian employees at major tech firms such as Zoho, Apple, and NVIDIA graduated from the country’s tier 3 colleges, a report said on Wednesday.

This highlights a shift towards skills-based hiring, the report from Blind, an anonymous social media app, said, based on its survey of 1,602 Indian professionals.

The survey categorised colleges based on the NIRF 2025 rankings into tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, and overseas institutes.

“While traditional financial firms still place value on college names, major tech firms tend to prioritise skills. At companies like Zoho, Apple, NVIDIA, SAP, and PayPal, where many respondents said college had no influence on their careers, an average of 34 per cent of surveyed employees were Tier 3 graduates,” the report said.

Traditional financial and tech firms such as Goldman Sachs, Visa, Atlassian, Oracle, and Google continued to rely on campus recruitment, with an average of 18 per cent of respondents being tier 3 graduates.

While 59 per cent of tier 3 alumni and 45 per cent of overseas graduates considered their college education merely a line on their resume, the vast majority of tier 1 and tier 2 alumni attributed their career development to campus recruitment.

As many as 15 per cent of tier 3 alumni reported significant salary benefits from their education, while 74 per cent indicated it was helpful only in the early stages or not at all.

Around 53 per cent of overseas graduates reported that college had little or no effect on their earnings.

Blind said that 41 per cent of surveyed professionals graduated from tier 1 colleges such as IITs, IISc, top IIMs, BITS Pilani, etc., 30 per cent from tier 2 colleges, 25 per cent from tier 3 and 4 per cent from overseas institutions.

–IANS

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