This placement season, finance pips consulting as top IIM recruiter

After deferred joining fiasco last year, e-commerce sector participation declines

Finance has dislodged consulting as the top recruiting industry during final placements at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this year. 

Overtaking consulting, finance companies have made the most offers at IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Kozhikode, according to the business schools’ placement reports. IIM-Ahmedabad is yet to release its final data and IIM-Bangalore saw the consulting industry making over 30 per cent of the offers to a batch of 411 students. 

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citibank, DBS, HSBC, American Express, Axis Bank, Deutsche Bank, Edelweiss and Société Générale were among the banks and finance sector companies that made 29 per cent, 26 per cent and 23 per cent of the offers, respectively, at IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Kozhikode and IIM-Lucknow. At IIM-Bangalore, Goldman Sachs made 14 offers, followed by Citibank with five and HSBC with four.

After deferred joining dates and cancelled job offers, e-commerce saw a dip in participation, the IIMs admitted.  Flipkart was absent from several campuses and Amazon, which had made 16 offers last year at IIM-Bangalore, made 12 this year.

“We experienced a qualitative improvement in placements this year. Increased hiring by banks, consulting firms and consumer goods companies compensated for the companies that could not participate in placements this year,” said Ganesh N Prabhu, chairperson, career development services, IIM-Bangalore. 

From 47 offers by e-commerce companies last year, the tally dipped to 23 this year at IIM-Bangalore. Amazon, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Paytm, Olacabs, Uber and RedBus, and other e-commerce companies had offered 19 per cent of the jobs at IIM-Calcutta in 2016, which declined to 14 per cent this year. 

The placement process at IIM-Ahmedabad was conducted in three clusters, which saw leading participation by companies in the consulting, consumer goods, finance, investment banking, manufacturing, and e-commerce industries.

Prominent recruiters included Accenture Strategy, AT Kearney, Bain & Company, Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, CK Birla Group, Mahindra, Tata Administrative Services, Rivigo, Sprinklr and MobiKwik, among others.

IIM-Calcutta reported the highest domestic package of Rs 70 lakh a year and the highest international package of $130,000. IIM-Kozhikode had 107 recruiters making 343 offers and the highest domestic salary was Rs 37 lakh a year, with the average annual compensation at Rs 17.14 lakh.

At IIM-Calcutta, offers made by companies in information technology (IT), sales and marketing, and general management registered a three per cent dip. Sales and marketing emerged as the top profile at 26 per cent of total offers at IIM-Lucknow, followed by finance (23 per cent), consulting (22 per cent), and IT (12 per cent).  

Offers at IIM-Lucknow were made by companies in finance, market research, analytics, business development and social media marketing, the institute said.