Consulting to rule the roost at final placements of B-Schools

BFSI sector comes in as a close second

This placement season, consulting firms are expected to rule the roost in the business school campuses across the country. Recruiters in the consulting sector such as KPMG, Deloitte India and BCG are looking to either match the number of recruitments made last year or increase by at least 10%. Plus, they are visiting non-Indian Institute of Management (IIM) campuses too.

Accenture Strategy made 18 offers (including pre-placement offers), which was the highest number of offers in Cluster 1 of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) final placements held yesterday. The list of Cluster 1 recruiters included regular partners such as Accenture Strategy, AT Kearney, Bain & Co., The Boston Consulting Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey.

A Managing Director from Accenture said, “ The excellent student quality with diverse background and profiles, apart from the past experience with students recruited from IIM-A and their track record, brings us to campus every year and drives us to recruit more people."

The financial services sector may come in as a close second. IIM Lucknow which completed the final placement for the graduating class of 2014 had consulting and finance among the top three segments based on the roles offered.

The institute, in a statement, said that in spite of the current economic situation, IIM Lucknow attracted diverse roles in the finance domain. Among companies in the consulting space, Deloitte, IBM, McKinsey and BCG recruited in large number at IIM-L. Further, investment banks like Goldman Sachs also recruited in big numbers reaffirming their faith in the finance talent, said the IIM-L release.

Consulting firms have expressed their intent to recruit students from across business schools. "We are recruiting almost at the same level as last year. Maybe we will increase it by 10%. We recruit looking at the talent and don't fix a set number of recruitments. We will be going to most of the IIMs and other top B-schools," said P Thiruvengadam, Senior Director - Human Capital Advisory, Deloitte India.

With ambitious growth plans and expanding their presence, consulting major KPMG is looking to increase its hiring numbers by 100. Shalini Pillay, Head People, Performance and Culture, KPMG in India said that KPMG hired approximately 100 B-school graduates last year, and is looking at hiring close to 200 B-school graduates this year.

With respect to the economic slowdown and its impact on the hiring environment, Pillay said that KPMG has ambitious growth plans and are significantly strengthening and expanding our presence in the business consulting space across several industries.

"A large part of our MBA hiring happens through the IIMs, however we hire talent across top B Schools. We are investing heavily to recruit from across talent pools that are relevant for our businesses. With our significant business growth plans, our hiring numbers have increase, overall and this has proportionately generated an uplift across all academic disciplines that KPMG hires from, including the IIMs," said Pillay.

In 2013, consulting sector emerged as the top recruiter at the 2013 final placements of IIM Ahmedabad. As per final placement data audited by rating agency Crisil, under the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS), IIM-A said the consulting sector recruited in large numbers in both finals and laterals placement processes.

Among global investment banks, Goldman Sachs was the largest recruiter having picked seven students for roles in financial markets as well as quantitative strategy at IIM-A.

Investments banks like Goldman Sachs are looking at increasing the hiring numbers by 30%. V Bunty Bohra, CEO of Goldman Sachs Services in India said that business schools are a key source of talent for Goldman Sachs in Bangalore and they will continue to recruit from them in 2014.

"In 2013 the number of hires from business schools was roughly 70 professionals and 45 interns. In 2014 we expect the number of our professional hires to increase by 30 percent and intern hires to increase by more than 50 percent. Since establishing a presence in Bangalore a decade ago, Goldman Sachs has continued to grow with the Indian economy. In 2014, our overall hiring from business schools is expected to increase by 40%."

He explained that as a firm, they believe in attracting talent from diverse backgrounds and hence will recruit talented people from business schools across India.

Meanwhile, business schools have seen a good response from across sectors for the final placements. XLRI-Xavier School of Management, which has completed the final placement of its entire batch of 245 students said that that in continuation with the trend from the recently concluded Summer Internship Placements the Campus Recruitment Process was marked by an overwhelming presence of recruiters from the Financial sector domain and advent of new recruiters from the Consulting domain.

Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai has  has already finished the final placement process and is preparing the report on the same. A placement committee member said that this year they had 58 PPOs and PPIs compared to 55 last year.

This year, non-IIM campuses are also being favoured by the companies in the consulting space. Suresh Subudhi, partner and director, BCG India said that they have two routes of hiring B-School candidates. One is the summer internship route and the other is final placement route.

"We are looking to hire 55-56 people from B-Schools alone. Apart from the IIMs, we will go to SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) and FMS. We have hired six people from IIM Lucknow, and will be visiting IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta. "We have been growing at a higher substantial double digit growth vs last year. Due to this, we have not reduced our hiring numbers," said Subudhi.

At Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon, they have already seen a 23% rise in the average salary offered. "It has been an absolute pleasure to associate ourselves with 27 [till now] new recruiters this year. This includes few of the major players offering international profiles and some very promising start-ups. We still have a few big names in our wish list and we are channelizing our efforts towards building an association with them," said Kanwal Kapil, Associate Professor & Chairperson Placements, MDI Gurgaon.

 Business schools have already begun to see the positive impact of the positive hiring intent of these firms. According to a placement committee member at IIM Indore, the sectors that are looking upbeat for the placement season this year include consulting and BFSI, followed by IT, e-commerce and FMCG.

"Consulting and BFSI seem to continue ruling the roost. The kind of recruiters that have confirmed their participation for placement at our campus mostly belong to consulting and BFSI, followed by IT and FMCG," the placement committee member at IIM Indore stated.