>MNC lure fades as Indian recruiters hold sway on campus

>The craze for an MNC job is finally fading. B-school students are veering towards domestic recruiters this placement season, as Indian companies acquire the professional edge and go global. At Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar, five Indian companies topped the recruitment charts Polaris, TCS, HCL Technologies, ICICI Bank and SBI Capital Markets.The story is no different on campuses like TA Pai Management Institute, XLRI and Welingkar Institute of Management, which have nearly completed placements.

Students at the IIMs, who are gearing up for placements, too believe a career with Indian companies is as challenging and rewarding as it is at an MNC. “Indian companies have changed from the earlier stagnant growth for employees and undefined job profile. Today, public sector companies too are projecting growth prospects to students,” says IIM Indore Chairperson (Placements) Prashant Salwan. Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), one of the early birds in the current placement season, saw domestic firms like Aditya Birla Group, ITC, Godrej Consumer, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors, Hero Honda and Axis Bank recruiting with increased vigour. “There was a time when a job offer with a foreign position would trigger excitement amongst all the students. Often, the entire batch would apply for it. Not any more,” says Munish Bhargava, Corporate and Placement Advisor. Students have become more role and job profile-oriented, which Indian companies are catering to, he adds.

The recession-proof nature of the Indian economy, which is expected to expand by 8.6% this fiscal compared with 8% last year, is another draw for students. At the same time, globalisation of Indian corporates and Indian innovation over the past few years have played their part. The launch of the world’s cheapest car Nano, consumer goods companies like Godrej and Dabur looking to go global, Tata Motors buying Jaguar Land Rover, Hindalco’s Novelis acquisition are just a few instances that have left a lasting impression on young minds. A recent study by consultancy firm Towers Watson has given the highest score to Indian employers in the area of career advancement opportunities. Almost 60% of the surveyed companies reported that opportunities for employees have improved over the past 12 months, in contrast to China at 54%. Developed economies like Japan and Singapore reported just 19% and 28% respectively.

More than anything else, hierarchical barriers have dissolved in domestic companies, as has the babu culture, where promoters would have the last word in everything. Senior executives now enjoy empowerment in their jobs and independence in decision-making. “Successful brands attract both consumers and employees. Earlier, India had very few such home-grown brands,” says Future Group (Head – Private Brands) Devendra Chawla, who has had stints in both MNCs and domestic companies. Indian companies are creating new marketplaces, innovating, leading, winning consumers as well as offering meaningful, satisfying job roles which allow talent to reach their potential, he adds.

“Indian companies have become employers of choice over the past two to three years. Students are increasingly looking at the job profile and not necessarily money,” says IIM-Lucknow Director Devi Singh. Experienced professionals too are seeing improved scope for growth in domestic companies, he adds. Salaries at Indian companies and MNCs are on par too. While such differences were as high as even 100% just four to five years ago, the slowdown has rationalised the gap. It is currently not more than 10% to 20% in entry-level and senior positions.

The Towers Watson study quoted earlier said Indian employers score relatively better in terms of salaries. While 37% of employers in the Asia-Pacific region believe they provide their employees an opportunity to earn higher levels of compensation to a great extent, the number is almost 54 % for India. Compensation differences have narrowed to negligible levels over the past few years, says Santrupt Misra, Director (HR) of Aditya Birla Group. The group offers pay packages that have made it one of the most preferred recruiters on campus. Dabur too claims to offer salaries that are 15% to 20% less than its global counterparts like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. “But our job profile will be much more challenging. In fact, in the IIMs, we are also going to offer foreign postings to the students,” says Dabur India Executive Director (HR) A. Sudhakar.

In the first quarter of 2011, India, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Turkey and Singapore reported the strongest hiring plans, according to a recent survey by US-based HR firm Manpower. “Management practices in domestic companies are no less inferior to their global counterparts,” says Misra. Globally, there is a lot of consolidation in the corporate world, and Indian executives find that unsettling, he says. In India, the downside of consolidation is not that bad, as job losses are curtailed, adds Misra. Ankul Mishra, a graduating batch student in one of the IIMs sums it up: “If the past decade was all about foreign MNCs, this decade will surely be about Indian MNCs. Be it job profile, salary, growth prospects or prestige nothing is less these days in Indian companies.”

Source: The Economic Times, February 18, 2011

>For laterals, IIM pay packets take vertical route

>IIMs across the country have reported up to a 25% increase in salaries offered to experienced professionals this year. The highest salary in the lateral placements process so far this year is Rs. 70,00,000 (US$ 150,000), offered to a student at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K), by commodities trading company Olam International. Olam has also offered this salary to students at IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). In some cases, lateral placements, which mark the beginning of the placements process at IIMs every year, have also reported up to 75% increase in the number of offers this year, over 2010.

Although the older IIMs — including the top three of Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — declined to share figures, the biggest gainers as of now appear to be the new institutes. IIM-K, for instance, has reported an increase of 20-25% in the average salary being offered by companies across sectors such as consulting, FMCG, financial services and IT. The highest domestic package on offer is Rs. 3 million, up from Rs. 2.8 million last year, while the highest international package is Rs. 7 million. Several firms such as Fujitsu, Lenovo, Thomas Cook, SunTec, EXL and the Manipal Group have offered senior managerial positions to candidates with as little as three years of experience.

“With the economy looking up, placement offers have been much better this year,” IIM-K Placements Committee Member Nikhil Rawat said. “Students have been able to secure profiles of their choice, and salaries have been significantly higher.” ICICI Bank and Deloitte Consulting have hired 16 students each from IIM-K this year, while Cognizant Business Consulting has picked up 13. Deloitte’s Chief People Officer Dhananjay Bansod said the company is offering 10-15% higher salaries at the IIMs this year, which works out to anywhere between Rs. 1 million and Rs. 1.3 million. The firm is looking to increase its manpower to 15,000 this year, about 3,000 more than the March 2010 headcount. “We expect a growth rate of 15% in India this financial year,” he added.

“This year 85% of the companies will be hiring fresh, according to our survey. This means there is a renewed competition amongst companies to get the best of talent from across institutes, on the back of a revived economy. They have to even compete with international companies for candidates. It’s natural for them to offer competitive such salaries,” says Shamita Chatterjee, business leader, information products and solutions, Mercer India.

IIM-Indore has seen a 10-25% rise in salaries for experienced candidates this year, with pay packets ranging between Rs. 1 million and Rs. 2.5 million. Consulting and IT have been major recruiters with firms such as Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, PwC, Cognizant Business Consulting, Infosys, Wipro Consulting, HCL and TCS picking up candidates. Besides these, companies such as Reliance Power, L&T, RIL and Adani Group have also recruited from IIM, Indore.

Salaries across IIMs had plunged by 25-30% after the global economic crisis hit the world in 2008-09. However, 2009-10 onwards, salaries started recovering by 10-20%. At IIM-K, for instance, average salary in 2007-08 was Rs. 1.48 million, which fell to Rs. 1.01 million in 2008-09 and rose to about Rs. 1.2 million in 2009-10.

IIM-Calcutta, which is just a month into the process, has already received 225 offers, including pre-placement ones. This is an increase of 75% from last year. “With more than 50 firms participating in the process this year, international companies such as Barclays, Olam International, McKinsey & Co, BCG, Bain & Co, AT Kearney, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have notched up an unprecedented number of hires.

Some of them had hired very few people, or given the institutes a complete miss during the slowdown,” said IIM-C External Relations Secretary Abhijeet Kamath. IIM-Bangalore, with a batch size of 348, has already received 96 offers from 31 companies. IIM-B career development services head Sapna Agarwal cautioned that though the number of lateral offers is higher this time than during the corresponding period last year, this could also be because of a larger batch size.

Source: The Economic Times, February 16, 2011