Top B-school graduates prefer foreign firms

Indian companies may be the talk of deal street, but on job street they hardly get a second look from students of top business schools like IIMs as they are going all out to embrace job offers from foreign firms.

With salaries nearly double than those of domestic firms, foreign companies such as McKinsey, Accenture, Nokia, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank and Google have taken over the list of leading recruiters of management students graduating from institutes like IIMs, XLRI and FMS Delhi.

However, the talent management acquisition arm of India's leading corporate house Tata Group TAS has managed to break into the dominance of foreign firms by notching up the third position in the list of the top ten most preferred recruiters this year, according to a new survey.

TAS has been ranked even ahead of global investment banking giant Goldman Sachs and FMCG major Procter and Gamble (P&G), according to AC Nielsen Campustrack Survey 2007.

"As Tata Group transforms itself into a truly global group with the excitement of cross border growth, M&As and organic projects, TAS is providing young professionals with breathtaking challenges and a pride of a generation making discontinuous difference," Tata Sons Executive Vice President and Group Human Resources Head Satish Pradhan said.

TAS is the central talent pool for the Tata group that deputes personnel across various companies, industries, functions and geographies. It ranked after McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which have been named as the top two recruiters.

TAS was incorporated in the 1950s as a developmental programme designed to groom and prepare young professionals for Tata group's general management.

According to the group, TAS, formerly known as Tata Administrative Services, is perhaps the only Indian employment brand recruiting for long-term mobility across sectors, functions and countries.

It is seen on the campus as the 'toughest' process to 'crack' as the brand attracts the high achievers, the group said in a statement.

The list of top recruiters was prepared on the basis of student responses from eight top business schools "" IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Lucknow, FMS, Delhi, SP Jain, Mumbai, XLRI, Jamshedpur and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

TAS recruits students from the first seven. The other companies on the top-ten list include Goldman Sachs on fourth, followed by P&G, IT services giant Accenture, world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia, British banking giant Barclays Bank, Germany's Deutsche Bank and internet search major Google.

Higher salaries are seen as the key driver behind the students' preference for foreign companies. According to a separate AC Nielsen study released earlier this month, IIM students' average salary expectation is close to Rs 19 lakh, up 30 per from last year.

While they expect an average package of Rs 14.2 lakh from domestic companies, the figures double to about Rs 27.4 lakh when it comes to foreign firms.

According to the study, management consultancy and investment banking have emerged as the most preferred sectors amongst the IIM 2008 batch, with a large number of students expressing their preference to join firms like McKinsey, BCG and Goldman Sachs.