Job offers aplenty at top business schools, but salary growth muted

Despite pandemic, nearly all students get placed after final rounds in top institutes

Job offers, led by management and strategy consulting firms, have been aplenty at the top business schools including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) that have concluded their placement process so far.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic has left its imprint across campuses as they have posted a muted salary growth in the 2021 final placements over last year.

Consulting firms, followed by information technology (IT), finance and consumer goods, have continued to rule the roost at campus placements. Offers have, however, come along with either single-digit growth in average salaries or even a marginal dip in some institutes.

For instance, IIM Lucknow posted a seven per cent growth in its average salary, at Rs 26 lakh per annum (LPA) this year as against Rs 24.25 LPA in 2020. XLRI Jamshedpur saw a three per cent rise, at Rs 25.08 LPA this year over last year’s Rs 24.30 LPA. On the other hand, IIM Kozhikode and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) saw a 2.5 per cent and 1.89 per cent dip, respectively. While IIM Kozhikode’s average annual cost-to-company (CTC) package stood at Rs 22.5 LPA as against Rs 23.08 LPA last year, SPJIMR attracted an average annual CTC of Rs 26.06 LPA as compared to Rs 26.36 LPA last year.

Most of these top B-schools continued to conclude their placements with largely 100 per cent of the batch being recruited. At IIM Bangalore, a total of 481 offers were made over just two days of interview to the postgraduate programme in management class of 2019-21. All 435 students, who appeared for interviews, were hired.

“Our students have done remarkably well. They have been recruited by reputable companies despite Covid-19 disruptions,” said U Dinesh Kumar, chairperson of Career Development Services at IIM Bangalore. Consulting companies make 165 or 34.3 per cent of the offers. Marquee recruiters like Accenture and Bain & Company handed the most number of offers (45 and 24).

Similarly, IIM Kozhikode witnessed 100 per cent placements for its 459 participating students, with offers from 137 recruiters, a 4.6 per cent annual increase. Consulting firms led with 32.7 per cent offers, up from 29 per cent last year, while banking, financial services and insurance, and sales and marketing roles made up 21.5 per cent and 15.25 per cent of the offers.

Among the regular recruiters this year are Accenture Strategy, Bain & Co., BCG, EY, Infosys Consulting, PwC, Axis Bank, Bank of America, Citi Bank, Deu­tsche Bank, Equirus Capital, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ICICI Ba­nk, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Despite a challenging year and being forced to conduct the final placement virtually, B-schools were able to ensure jobs for almost all students in a short time. Moreover, while compensation packages may have seen some impact, the pandemic has not altogether deterred international offers. Campuses such as IIM Lucknow and XLRI Jamshedpur saw international offers too, apart from attracting new recruiters.

At IIM Lucknow, international offers were extended by companies such as African Industries Group, Landmark Group and Noon while first-time recruiters included Amagi, Angel Broking, Bayer, Comviva, FMC, HDFC Securities, Indus Insights, Jana Bank, Morgan Stanley, Navi Technologies, Red Fort Capital, Sabre Partners and Zynga.

XLRI saw 108 recruiters with 370 domestic and international offers, inclusive of 23 new finals recruiters. “As a testament to IIM Lucknow’s legacy of getting 100 per cent of its batch placed, we were able to complete yet another final placement season with the same record, despite the limitations posed by the pandemic,” the B-school said.