At a time many companies are going in for a recruitment freeze in view of the current global financial crisis, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the nodal body for chartered accountants(CA) in the country, is aims to organise its first mid-career campus placements for CAs already in practice to get them to rejoin the industry as direct practitioners.
At present, almost 80 per cent of newly qualified CAs were joining corporates rather than going for independent practice.
ICAI in response would host a mid-career placement session in Mumbai in January 2009 for CAs.
"The programme would be eventually spread to the other parts of the country", said Sanjeev Maheshwari, member of the central council of ICAI.
Currently, around 50 per cent of all CAs in the country worked for corporates.
Investment banking firms that accounted for nearly 10 to 12 per cent of the net placements of CAs had practically gone in for a recruitment freeze following shocks in the global markets that resulted in take overs of major firms like Merril Lynch by the Bank of America, and bankruptcies.
More From This Section
Recruitments in manufacturing, banking and insurance as well as information technology sectors have not been affected, Maheshwari claimed.
ICAI placed around 2500 freshly qualified CAs through 16 campus interviews conducted in two phases this year with an average salary of Rs 6.11 lakh, with the highest being Rs12.91 lakh.
Around 12,000 CAs cleared the final CA papers every year, and around 4500 opted for the campus placement initiative of ICAI. Most passouts were absorbed directly by corporates after industrial training, while some others went in for further academic specialisation.