The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, has started approaching various companies for the ensuing placement season in January. The B-school, which saw a subdued placement season in 2009, expects the job scenario to improve with the economy showing signs of revival.
Speaking to Business Standard, V K Menon, ISB senior director (careers, admissions and financial aid), said the school was expecting bigger, better and more challenging roles for students. “Last year, there was not much change in the roles. Many students stuck to their domains. But for the ensuing placement season, we hope to see emphasis on roles offered by companies,” he said.
As many as 326 companies visited ISB in 2009 and made 401 offers for 437 students as compared with 230 com-panies making 657 offers for 421 students in 2008. The subdued demand led the institute to introduced a ‘one-offer’ policy for the Class 2009 to ensure that all students get an offer. The year also saw about 25 students tak-ing to entrepreneurship while some returned to family businesses or their previous employers.
The 2010 batch has 579 students (26 per cent women) with a mix of functional, industry and academic backgrounds including from IT consulting products, law, media, communication, medicine, marine engineering, consulting, finance and others. There are 336 students with international work experience, while 17 students were self-employed before joining the ISB.
“Finding placement for the students will not be a problem,’’ Menon said adding the response has been encouraging from major areas — consulting, technology and fina-nce. Among others, the healthcare sector is seeing a steady demand. “The offers in the healthcare sector are doubling every year,” he said.
Allied fields including pharmaceuticals, hospital management, medical tourism, wellness have been absorbing a good number of ISB students. Together, these sectors accounted for 11 per cent of the total offers for the 2009 batch and were ‘day one’ companies during the last placement season.
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“The salaries will follow the economic trends,” Menon said. The compensation packages for the 2009 batch students dropped to Rs 13-15 lakh per annum as compared with Rs 18-20 lakh in the previous year. The average domestic salary stood at Rs 15.05 lakh (down from Rs 19 lakh the previous year) and the average international salary was $119,022 (down from $144,812 last year).
ISB this year has strengthened its Learning and Development Cell to understand the aspirations of students as well as companies and do the matching. “The career shifts will be strong this year,” he said adding that the slowdown has forced many companies to go slow on their expansion plans and the might be looking to compensate for that.