IIMs not to reveal salary figures

Threat to students and worried companies have made the IIMs sit up.

After years of being compared on the basis of the pay packets offered to their students, most Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have decided not to reveal the salary figures from this year onwards.

While IIM-Indore has already decided not to reveal salaries, IIM-Calcutta may not reveal the company's name.

IIM-A, though, is yet to take a call. If IIM-Bangalore and IIM-Lucknow stopped revealing placement salaries due to threat to students, other B-schools are likely to follow suit.

The reason: Companies offering high packages are being confronted by a new human resources problem in the form of their existing young employees who get disheartened to see students with no experience walking out with better profiles and overall packages than them.

Moreover, families of the students who get high salaries have asked the institutes not to name the students fearing for their lives.

Every class of Post Graduate Programme (PGP) at each of the IIMs has around 40 per cent of candidates with no work experience or less than 6 months work experience.

But two years of the strenuous programme at an IIM immediately pits most of them in middle level positions in reputed firms in India and abroad.

Announcements of these salaries have not always gone down well with existing employees of companies or the companies themselves, who feel the salaries contain several components like location, position, vertical, and current market factors and cannot be taken at face value.

"A student from the IIMs would definitely start off with a better package than his or her counterpart from any other management school. It depends on the company and how well they are able to communicate with existing employees regarding parameters of growth. If the communication is not in place, it could certainly lead to an insecure work environment, "said the head of HR at a top investment bank which recruits from IIMs every year.

IIM Indore, which was asked by companies not to do reveal salary figures in order to avoid conflicts with its existing employees has, therefore, continued the trend set by IIM Bangalore and followed by IIM Lucknow.

"The IIMs are not a placement organisation. We are an educational institute whose main motive is to work with students towards their overall growth. We have no intention of creating worries for companies who feel their recruits from IIMs hog the limelight unnecessarily, thereby creating conflict within the organisation, "said a highly placed source from IIM Indore, who admitted that while it has brought a better brand value to attract international recruiters, it was now being used to compare the IIMs in quantitative terms.

A professor from IIM Ahmedabad revealed that the institute had wanted to ban announcement of salary figures for the past four or five years but was not able to do so.

He said that although the institute had not yet taken a decision on whether they will announce any figures for final placements 2008, they would not be announcing the highest salaries or the name of the company and the student.

IIM Calcutta said that the institute plans to avoid giving details of the student, salary and company in co-relation but might give some figures depending on the recruiter.

IIM Bangalore had stopped revealing salary figures after a student wrote to the institute that they were facing physical and psychological distress since the large salary figure could attract unscrupulous elements. IIM Lucknow decided to follow suit for final placements in March 2007 citing "value" reasons.