Newer IIMs seek professional help to get their students placed

The younger IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) are seeking professional help to get their students placed and create better linkages with industry to deal with a muted job market and bigger batch sizes. Final placements at IIM-Ahmedabad, considered the B-school benchmark, have had a muted start (ET, February 11). The younger IIMs too may have a poor run in final placements, necessitating dedicated effort on their part. Institutes such as IIM-Kashipur, IIM-Ranchi, IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Shillong have hired – in most cases, on contract – advisors in corporate relations and placement to reach out to companies with information on the work they are doing and the quality of students.

The professionals, mostly from HR or sales and marketing backgrounds, are filling in for the already-stretched faculty at IIMs. Traditionally, at the premier institutes, faculty members take up additional charge of facilitating the placements process. Advisors are charging a fee ranging from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 for four days a month. Placements – whether summer internships or the finals – have been a challenge at the new IIMs, more so with increased batch sizes. “It’s the toughest year yet in terms of placement,” says P. Rameshan, Director, IIM-Rohtak. The institute is trying to place 122 students, as against last year’s 47.

The advisors have been given the mandate of building relationships with top management in companies, sourcing talent for corporates, organising and initiating chairs and endowments, getting corporate sponsorships for events, handling various stakeholders and marketing the institutes’ brands. “It’s like a start-up challenge. We need time to establish and promote the institute. There are companies who don’t even know where new IIMs are. Also, the market realities of placements can’t be wished away,” says Gautam Sinha, Director, IIM-Kashipur.

It’s all about professionalising the process, says IIM-Ranchi Director MJ Xavier. The institute’s summers process, which started in September, is almost complete while the finals process, which started in January, is expected to wrap up in first week of March. It had a batch of 160 students to place in the summers while the finals process has 66 students, up from last year’s 44.

The institute has roped in Arijit Majumdar as advisor, external relations, to help with the process. Majumdar has a good 30 years of experience at various levels of management across FMCG, publishing, media and entertainment industries. He has also served as chief of corporate relations and external affairs at IIM-Shillong in the first two years of its existence. IIM-R is also looking at making a proposal to the board to get a headhunting firm to do the job, with a team working full-time on placements and external relations.

IIM-Kashipur has roped in Partha Dasgupta, who has 34 years of experience of working in the corporate sector. Dasgupta, a post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations from Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi, is on an annual contract to help enhance the institute’s brand, and match students’ profiles and skills with jobs available at various companies.

Till date, 50 companies have come for the summers and finals and the figure is expected to touch around 80 in a week. The batch size for summers and finals is around 40 students each. “A major challenge for companies is the logistics as Kashipur is a non-metro.

While the feedback on the quality of students is good, the salary bands are not that high,” says Dasgupta.
IIM-Shillong, which has had professional help from its inception, says it is showing results. “We are more comfortable this year. We have had to struggle due to our location,” says Keya Sengupta, Director of the institute, which is trying to place a batch of 105 students. The institutes are hoping that every step in this direction will soon make them names to reckon with.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), February 15, 2013

No sign of job slowdown at IIMs this year

Telecom companies are downsizing, so are some stock brokerages, and information technology (IT) firms are watchful. There are more than a few jitters in the job market, but none of that is taking away the lure of B-Schools. Early data flowing in from at least five Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) suggests that companies, especially MNCs, will hire more from campuses this year than the last.

IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) has already received 45 pre-placement offers, or PPOs, and 17 pre-placement interviews, or PPIs, for students in the 2012 batch. International banks such as RBS, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered have made many of the early PPOs. Consulting firms like McKinsey & Co, BCG, Bain & Co, FMCG major Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and software giant Microsoft are also in the fray. The institute had received 92 PPOs last year. “Our estimates indicate the numbers this time are slightly higher,” says the institute’s Chairman-Placements, Amit Dhiman. He added that IIM-C has already received multiple offers from major international financial hubs such as New York (Wall Street), London, Singapore and Hong Kong, despite concerns of a financial slowdown.

IIM-Indore (IIM-I) and IIM-Kozhikode (IIM-K) have already raced past their respective PPO figures for the previous year. “The numbers are rising sharply over the last two weeks. Most of the companies start delivering their PPO/PPI status in September,” Ashish Sadh, Chairman-Placements at IIM-Indore, said.

This is just the beginning
Companies such as Citibank, American Express, Deutsche Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, HUL, Cognizant, Tata Motors, TCS, Set MAX, Madura Garments and Cummins have made offers at the institute. Prof. PD Jose, Chairman-Placements at IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B), said, “Such (hiring) decisions reflect the expectations of companies with regards to the future economic outlook.” IIM-B said ‘the trend looks healthy’, but IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) did not share any numbers.

“More than 50% of the PPOs are from strategy consulting firms. The conversion rate (of internship to PPO) at the top five consulting firms is greater than 90%. Finance is the next big sector, with 33% of PPOs so far,” said Sapna Agarwal, career development services head at IIM-B. The institute had received 90 PPOs last year. Aruna Krishnan, GM-Talent Engagement & Development at Wipro, said, “There is no cause for concern with regards to slowdown in hiring. It is a continuous process for the company to hire talent from top B-schools to fill leadership positions.”

Deloitte CPO Dhananjay Bansod added, “Our agenda is growth and we will continue to hire for growth.” Companies make pre-placement offers to candidates who intern with them for around two months during the summers. Early offers indicate employers want to retain talent ahead of the final placements in January next year. Pre-placement offers have just started flowing in. The window will be open till January-February until final placements kick off. Typically, PPOs from investment banks come October onwards, so a good chunk of PPOs is yet to come.

“Considering that September is the most productive month, we expect a definite rise compared with last year,” Anmol Bhalla, placement committee coordinator at IIM-I, said. Still, 2012 will not be without challenges. Many IIMs have increased batch sizes this year; IIM-I, for example, has gone from 240 to 450. Among the non-IIM B-schools, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies has received a total of 18 PPO & PPIs from JPMorgan Chase, Cummins India and Idea Cellular. “Recruiters’ perception has been encouraging this year,” said Shobha Pai, Director-Placements, School of Business Management, at the institute. Management Development Institute (MDI)-Gurgaon too has received about 20 PPOs and 23 PPIs, compared with a total of 41 PPOs last year.

Source: The Economic Times, September 8, 2011

IIM-A to convince recruiters to reveal data about salary

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) plans to take the lead in convincing recruiters to share data relating to the salaries they offer B-school graduates during recruitment. The details, relating mainly to the guaranteed cash component and variable pay, will be used in a pan-India placement reporting standards initiative that is being adopted by various B-schools. This will help in standardising salaries and making the process more transparent. It will also aim to bring compatibility between business schools.

B-school representatives, who met at a conference hosted by IIM-A last week, said it was not easy to get salary data from recruiters because of confidentiality reasons. To which IIM-A placements committee chairperson, Professor Saral Mukherjee, said his institute would try and convince companies, at various for a, to share the data.

IIM-A had prepared a draft for the placements reporting standards in February, and had sought online feedback from all the stakeholders, like students, recruiters, other B-schools and ranking agencies. IIM-A has already implemented the standards on its campus, informed Prof Mukherjee, adding that the institute was able to get the salary data of 210 out of 312 students.

“We will talk to recruiters to get detailed data about the guaranteed cash and Maximum Earning Potential (variable portion) components,” Mukherjee said. “If we prepare placements reporting standards only for IIM-A, they will provide transparency and authenticity, but not necessarily compatibility. For that, we need others to do this as well. We have spoken to other B-schools about this, and are open to suggestions from all the stakeholders for the standards.”

Some stakeholders are responding positively. Deepika Pandita, Assistant Professor and Placement Advisor for the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Pune, said: “I felt that IIM-A was quite flexible. This is the first time an IIM is going ahead with transparency in the decision-making process, with the support of the other, relatively smaller B-schools.”

IIM-A has been trying to bring change at various levels. Last year it replaced the day-based placements process with a ‘cohorts’ system, which helps reduce pressure on both students and recruiters. In October, it organised a recruiters’ conclave in Mumbai, where it invited the placements heads of leading B-schools to give their views on the cohort-based placements process.

There weren’t that many takers for this, however. “We shared our experience with Bschools during the Mumbai conclave, and we are ready to help any institute take this up,” Mukherjee said. “But no institute has contacted us for introducing the cohort-based process yet.” Nevertheless, IIM-A has found that a conference or a large gathering of stakeholders is the best way to gauge reactions to a new initiative. Which is why at last week’s meeting, it proposed the pan-India placements reporting standards before the participants.

After taking suggestions from the others, IIM-A has made some changes to the reporting standards draft. For instance, a number of B-schools disagreed that since internships are an academic requirement, this should be guaranteed by the institute. The draft was then modified to say that internship data would, henceforth, be segregated, based on whether it was secured through the institute or otherwise.

The conference was attended by representatives from 33 B-schools including the IIMs in Bangalore and Shillong, Xavier Institute of Social Services in Ranchi, Goa Institute of Management, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Taxila Business School, SP Jain from Mumbai and others.

“It is good to see that a premier B-school is inviting all the reputed as well as the not so well-known B-schools for discussion on an important issue,” said Prakash Pathak, of the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. IIM-A will also organise a two-day event on redesigning the MBA programme in July, and has already invited a number of business schools to participate in this.

Source: The Economic Times, June 24, 2011

B-schools see red over IIM-A’s placement reporting norms

The attempt of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to bring in more transparency with a new placement reporting standard, has left tier-3 B-schools in India worried. B-schools that score low on critical parameters – infrastructure, intellectual capital, industry interface and placements – are termed tier-3 B-schools. Such attempts may result in tier-3 management institutes losing out in placements to large- and mid rung B-schools and could widen the ranking gap between them, said B-schools.

“Traditionally, recruiters have preferred better performing and top B-schools against the smaller ones. Recently, a recruiter firm came to our campus only because it couldn’t get students from a top institute in our region. Once the placement reporting standards are implemented, such a scenario may aggravate and smaller institutes may lose out more in the long run,” said Sanjeev Bajaj, Chief Coordinator, Placements and Corporate Relations of Ranchi-based, Xavier Institute of Social Service.

Echoing similar views, Hema Sisodia, Dean, Corporate Relations and Campus Placements, IBS Mumbai said: “If the salaries for some B-schools are currently high, more transparency will attract more recruiters to those B-schools. If the salaries are low and variable compensation are not reflecting, then the smaller B-schools may lose out. Corporates are willing to respond to only better institutes.”

Last February, IIM-A had proposed to introduce placement reporting norms with the objective of bringing in transparency and uniformity in the manner in which B-schools report campus placements. Last week, many B-schools, led by IIM-A, decided to do away with the concept of cost-to-company (CTC). Instead, B-schools would now look to declare a maximum earning potential (MEP) that would include cash, non-cash and other variable components. IIM-A was of the opinion that CTC did not reflect the guaranteed cash component and gave a wrong picture about variable components, and said that reporting the total guaranteed cash components and MEP separately will provide sufficient meaningful information.

Among other B-schools which were apprehensive about losing out to competition are Pune-based Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) and Goa Institute of Management. “The moment a B-school states its salary structure, it defines its position in the market. As far as students and recruiters are concerned, everyone would like to move to the better performing ones. This is where the low rung B-schools will lose out. In fact, I also have doubts on how many institutes will go for the standards. The gap will only widen,” said R. Nagarajan, Associate Professor, Finance, Goa Institute of Management.

Rating agency Crisil, which has been grading B-schools for a year, however, chooses to disagree with the B-schools. It said B-schools will have an enhanced ability to generate trust with the student community and with recruiters, adding that the standards are still at a nascent stage and their acceptance remains to be seen.

“Leaders of B-schools are likely to be the first to adopt these standards. However, such measures of transparency, must not be viewed in the context of creating or widening gaps within the sector but more as an industry initiative to unite and self regulate. Once B-schools adopt these standards, it will make the sector more transparent, with respect to employment data and facilitate comparability. Tier-3 business schools can also choose to utilise these standards to showcase their commitment to transparency,” saids Hetal Dalal, Head-Ratings, Crisil.

IIM-A said such fears are unfounded. According to the institute, if B-schools focus on quality education than figures, which are misreported at present, they need not worry. Moreover, by focusing on quality education and building a strong alumni base, even low-rung B-schools can improve their positions.

“Placement reporting standard is just the beginning in ushering in transparency but this needs to be backed up by quality education. I think the fears are baseless because there is too much emphasis on compensation packages being a performance criterion than quality education,” said Saral Mukherjee, Chairperson, Placements at IIM-A.

Sisodia, however, has already worked out her strategy — focusing on maximum earning potential of the student. “The focus should be on maximum earning potential and how the variable portion of the package can be included to stay alive in the competition.”

Source: Business Standard, June 23, 2011

>B-schools to even out placement reporting norms

>Various MBA schools and stakeholders plan to meet in June to discuss reporting standards and make them more transparent, as proposed by Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) in October last year. The necessity for such a meeting came up because more and more aspirants are relying on these reports to make their choices.

“The exact date of the meeting will be announced in the first week of May, after which we will be inviting all stakeholders, including B-schools, companies, alumni, placement chairpersons of the other IIMs and the media to share our experience and take forward the process of finalising the placement reporting standards,” said Prof. Saral Mukherjee, faculty and head of the placement committee at IIM-A.

External Audit
Institutes that agree to the final draft of the reporting standards would become signatories and have their reports audited by an external auditor, Prof. Mukherjee told Business Line. A first draft of the reporting standards had been put on the IIM-A web site. Based on the feedback, the format would be fine-tuned, he said.

IIM-A is collecting data of the recently concluded placement process. A report of this in a new format would soon be released, he said, and added that most recruiters had co-operated and submitted their reports. The focus of the new format would be on aggregate statistics rather than personalised data to protect the privacy of students.

Dual Level
The report will work at two levels – when recruiters give offers to students and another when the institute shares data with the media. This is to ensure that no false or misleading information is spread and a true picture emerges. There is no comparable basis for offers.

While one recruiter includes meals, car allowance, bonus and a one-time payment in the cost to company, another may not. In such a situation, a student finds it difficult to make a choice, Prof. Mukherjee said. “Though there have been no voices of dissent, doubts had been expressed when the idea was first proposed.”

Smaller B-schools worried whether all recruiters would willingly give the institutes the reports in the particular format. IIM-A hopes that it will be able to acclimatise the recruiters with the process because of its bigger bargaining power with the industry than smaller B-schools, and by implementing the system first.

Source: Business Line, April 28, 2011

>ISB placements reach new peak

> In an indication that hiring of management professionals is back to prerecession levels, the graduating batch of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad got 661 offers, exceeding the previous high of 657 recorded in 2008. Besides, there is a 10-20 per cent increase in the average pay offered across the sectors. The B-school, which turned 10 this year, had 569 students in its Class of 2011, of whom 552 appeared for placements.

Announcing the placement results, ISB Dean Ajit Rangnekar today said the two major trends this year were the “phenomenal success” of women students in placements and its own alumni coming back to recruit from their alma mater. He said the ISB this year tried to undo the perceived significance of Day 1 by introducing a rolling placement process, which ran over successive weekends for two months, instead of four or five days at a stretch. He said the B-school also made it a policy not to disclose the highest salaries since it distorted the overall picture and led to speculative expectations. Instead, it has announced the average for the middle 80 per cent, removing the top and bottom 10 per cent.

This year, the media & entertainment (M&E) sector offered the highest average pay (cost to company) of Rs. 19.25 lakh, followed by consultancy (Rs. 18.9 lakh), information technology/enabled services (Rs. 18.07 lakh), infrastructure (Rs. 18.02 lakh), retail ( Rs. 17.63 lakh), oil, energy and minerals (Rs. 17.58 lakh) and pharma and biotech ( Rs. 17.47 lakh). At Rs. 15.81 lakh, banking and financial services was the least paying sector at this years placements. But the sector accounted for 12 per cent of all, with only consultancy (32 per cent) and IT/ITeS (21 per cent) ahead. M&E accounted for just three per cent of all offers. The largest increase in pay was seen in the manufacturing sector, which rose 42 per cent from Rs. 12.16 lakh last year to Rs. 17.32 lakh.

In terms of functions, consultancy was the most preferred, with 36 per cent of students bagging roles in it, followed by sales and marketing (20 per cent), general management (12 per cent) and finance (12 per cent). Companies founded by ISB alumni made seven offers, of which four were accepted.

Though the number of recruiting companies dropped to 310 (from last years 346), there was an increase in offers from international companies to 83 (73 in 2010). V K Menon, who heads the career advisory services wing of ISB, said this was arecognition of India as a talent hub. He said the increase came mainly from emerging economies in West Asia and Asia-Pacific, while offers from US companies remained constant. There were seven offers from African companies, of which four were accepted.

Five students joined the schools entrepreneurship incubation programme to start their own ventures in tourism, retail and mobile applications, among others. Around 25 ventures are at different stages of incubation at the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development.

Menon said the outgoing CTC was an average of 2.3 times the incoming CTC (i.e, the compensation the students were receiving at the time of joining ISB), while for its 160 female students, it was an average of 2.4 times.

Source: Business Standard, April 7, 2011

ISB gets highest job offers in 10 years
The controversy surrounding its tainted past chairman Rajat Gupta, who was last week replaced by Adi Godrej, does not seem to have made a dent on placements at the Indian School of Business (ISB), with 2011 notching up the highest number of job offers in the school’s 10 year history. On Wednesday, ISB announced that its grads bagged 661 offers from 310 companies this year, bettering the previous record of 657 offers made by 230 companies in 2008. Offers this year were 22% higher than the 541 offers made by 346 companies in 2010.

The 552 ISB grads who signed up for placements this year also grabbed fatter pay packages. Average salaries, according to ISB sources, shot up by 10-15% this year to hit an average package of over Rs. 18 lakh per annum as against Rs. 16 lakh per annum in 2010.

According to ISB officials, more number of offers being made per company is a clear reflection of the revival in the economy and the fact that companies are now in the expansion mode. However, they refused to divulge details of highest packages saying they had taken a conscious decision to stay away from the numbers game to avoid distortion of perception.

ISB, which follows the rolling placements process that stretches over a couple of months, said international offers shot up 35% to 84 this year, with students being placed in 19 cities across Middle-East, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and North America by 75 participating international players.

According to ISB’s senior director (career advancement services) V K Menon, students joining the advertising, media, communications, public relations and entertainment sector bagged the fattest pay cheques averaging Rs. 19.25 lakh, followed by consulting at Rs. 18.90 lakh, IT/ITeS at Rs. 18.06 lakh and infrastructure, construction and real estate at Rs. 18.02 lakh.

Consulting accounted for the largest chunk of offers at 32%, followed by IT/ITeS at 21% and banks and financial institutions at 12%, Menon said, adding that consulting also topped the function-wise offer distribution too at 36% followed by sales and marketing at 20% and finance and general management/strategic planning at 12% each.

Participating companies included top rung consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, AT Kearney, Booz & Company, IT/ITeS players like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Amazon, Cognizant and banks like Citibank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs among others. Indian players like Infosys, Hero group, TVS, L&T, Shapoorji & Pallonji, DRL and Apollo Hospitals.

Interestingly, lifestyle players like Louis Vuitton, Luxottica group, which manage top rung brands like Gucci, Ray Ban and Gabbana, as well as Conde Nast made a good number of offers this year. Women grads made their mark on placements this year by outdoing their male counterparts as far as average CTC is concerned. The graduating 160 women grads, who account for 28% strength of the batch, bagged 2.4 times higher average outgoing CTC than the average incoming CTC (in their jobs prior to joining ISB) as compared to the overall batch average of 2.3 times.

Commenting on the placement results, ISB Dean Ajit Rangnekar said: “This has been a very heartening placement season for us and resonates with our belief of providing high quality talents on a large scale to addressing the growing demand for business leaders for fueling our growth.” Incidentally, five grads opted out of the placement process to enroll in ISB’s inhouse entrepreneurship development initiative (EDI). With the Class of 2011, the ISB, which was set up in 2001, now has a network of over 3500 alumni spread across the world.

Source: The Times of India, April 7, 2011

>IIM-Shillong placement gives hope to new IIMs

>The Indian Institute of Mangement (IIM), Shillong, has started campus placement for graduates through video conference after facing difficulty in attracting a large number of companies to give choices in placement to students last year. The business school’s success is inspiring other new IIMs in small cities, which find it difficult to attract employers as they are inconveniently located or don’t have an established brand name, to turn to e-recruitment.

“We know there is a location disadvantage and we are a young IIM. But that should not be a bottleneck for our students’ placement,” said H.S. Chhabra, Professor In-charge of placement at IIM-Shillong. “This year we have placed at least one-third of our students through e-recruitment.” Chhabra said video conferencing allows company officials who don’t want to visit the campus to chat with prospective employees, give presentations and make job offers. “Out of 66 of our students, 22 have got through this process this year.” He did not name the companies, saying details of the placement season would be furnished only after it gets over.

Bharat Gulia, Senior Manager, Education, at consulting firm Ernst & Young, said necessity leads to such innovations in placement. Company executives don’t like going to far-off places for recruitment when there are connectivity problems, he said. “In case of IIM-Shillong, the nearest airport is Guwahati (in Assam). So recruitment through videoconference is a good way out just not for Shillong but all new IIMs,” he said. Companies sometimes want to hire just a few students, and it doesn’t make sense to go all the way in such a case, Gulia said.

This is the second year of campus placement for IIM-Shillong, which was launched in 2008. Last year, though they managed to place all their students, it was difficult to attract large number of corporate houses. Some other IIMs, which started classes last year and will go for placement in a year’s time, said they may follow IIM-Shillong’s lead. “This gives optimism. It has given a lot of encouragement to all of us,” IIM-Raipur’s Director B.S. Sahay said. “In spite of location, transportation and young brand name, we are optimistic to give good placement to our talented students.”

Besides Raipur, new IIMs were launched in Rohtak, Ranchi and Trichy last year; two more IIMs are set to open shop at Kashipur in Uttarakhand and Udaipur in Rajasthan by the coming academic session. While these campuses are being opened to ensure that students in smaller cities and town also have access to good business schools, their location does hamper campus placement as companies find it much easier to recruit from IIMs and other established business schools in metros like New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Chhabra said IIM-Shillong’s tech savvy has helped it establish its name faster than its peers. “In four years, we have established ourselves well. The faculty- teacher ratio is good, we have IT (information technology)-enabled classrooms and Vsat (very small aperture terminal, a two- way satellite ground station) facility.”

Source: Mint, March 15, 2011

>IIM-C grads opt for Finance sector, Consultancy comes second

>Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C), which wrapped up its final placements for the batch of 2009-11 in five days flat, has seen 31.3% of its students opting for the finance sector, followed by 23.7% choosing consulting and 21.6% going for the marketing sector.

Some 70 foreign offers were made to the batch, a significant increase over last year, with Abu Dhabi, Sydney and Miami among the new locations on offer. While the institute declined to divulge salary details, at IIM-C, the Slot 0 finance firms’ offers generally comprise a fixed component (Rs. 3-4 million for Indian locations and Rs. 4-6 million for foreign locations) and bonuses according to industry standards. Slot 0 consulting firms generally offer around Rs. 2-2.5 million base package for Indian locations in addition to a bonus component. Slot 0 marketing companies offer around Rs. 1.5-2.0 million for Indian locations. All the offer details are yet to come in.

But speaking at a press conference, IIM-C Dean (Programme Initiatives) Professor Sougata Ray said: “We are expecting atleast a 10-15 % increase in offer packages over last year.” Last year, the average domestic compensation excluding year-end bonuses stood at Rs. 1.53 million. The final placements alone saw 21 new recruiters. Nielsen & Co. selected students for their emerging leadership program in the finance domain. Daiwa, Avendus, India Infoline and CRISIL were some of the finance firms that visited IIM-C for the first time.

Source: The Economic Times, March 11, 2011

>XLRI students in high demand during campus placement

>Close on the heels of a record-breaking summer internship process, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur (widely known as XLRI), the premier B-school of the eastern region, has scaled new heights. The campus recruitment process of 2011 witnessed for the first time 240 students getting placed in less than four days. A total of 109 firms confirmed their participation and rolled out 317 offers. This year XLRI witnessed the highest number of offers made on campus with an increased batch size of 240 students being offered the widest possible range of profiles from across the sectors. The class of 2011 has successfully made their entry into coveted positions across the corporate world. There was a 19.25 per cent jump in pre-placement offers from last year with students being offered attractive jobs for excellent performance during summer internships.

The lateral placements at XLRI have been an impressive prelude to the campus recruitment process, with a rich mix of offers equally spread across various domains for middle and senior level management roles. The number of lateral offers doubled over last year with an average salary figure of Rs. 16,50,000. The placement process attracted 109 companies giving a total of 317 offers, to a batch of 120 business management and 120 personnel management and industrial relations (HR) students.

The average domestic package was around Rs. 15,80,000, a rise of close to 12 per cent over last year’s figure. The figure for the domestic salary of Rs. 14,70,000 echoes the focus on quality of job offers made at XLRI as a part of the placement season 2010. The highest domestic package was Rs. 23,00,000 per annum and according to sources it was offered by a consultancy firm.

XLRI’s position as a destination for premier finance roles stays, with 25 per cent of the total offers coming from the financial sector. ICICI Bank was the largest recruiter and had 21 offers. Marketing has drawn renewed interest from the students and was the most sought after profile with 25 per cent accepting offers. XLRI strengthened its relationship with consulting prima donnas with 25 per cent of the students entering the campus recruitment programme with top notch consulting firms involved in the process.

“This year saw an increase of 100 per cent in the batch of PMIR, but this was more than matched by the renewed interest of the recruiters for HR professionals” said Prof. Rajiv Misra, Chairperson, Placement Committee. Novartis AG offered its prestigious HR leadership development role at Basel, Switzerland, exclusively to XLRI, making the highest international offer of $120,000.

Source: The Times of India, February 15, 2011

Placements at FMS, Delhi set a new record

Summer placements at Delhi University’s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) have broken all records this year. All 235 students from two MBA courses got placements for two months in 91 companies in just five days. There was an increase of 150% in the highest stipend this year with an investment banking firm offering Rs. 250,000 to two students. In fact, the average stipend this year is Rs. 85000, which is an increase of almost 42% from last year.

Professor A. Venkat Raman, Placement Convener, FMS, said: “We are satisfied with the summer internship offers this year. Apart from roles in finance and marketing which have been the traditional strongholds, we also witnessed significant diversity in the profiles offered.” According to FMS, a record number of 145 companies had confirmed their presence in the placement drive this year, though 91 finally visited the campus. The rest could not visit the campus as all students had already been placed. “This year the response of the companies and the offers they made have been much better. We also got companies which havent been coming for summer placements for the last couple of years,” said Nagraj Chandrasekar, Media Coordinator, FMS.

This time, we had more private equity firms which are known to pay more. This explains the steep rise in the stipends this time, he said. Chandrasekar said coveted profiles like treasury, HR and risk management were offered, besides the traditional ones. No wonder, students are upbeat about the placement scene this year. According to them, summer jobs help companies discover the best talents on.

Source: The Times of India, November 16, 2010