Traditional recruiters like investment banks and consultancies were back on the campus on the first day of final placements at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) today.
Recruiters are learnt to have offered an increase of 10-20 per cent in average salaries across campuses, depending on the student’s work experience and profile. According to the institute, the fact that over 70 pre-placement offers were received by IIM-B students is an indicator that placements would be much better than last year.
“Students are cautiously optimistic for the placement. The summer placements were a good indicator of positive signals in hiring by companies. Companies interacted with us before the placement and we have also been in touch with alumni working in these companies. Overall, the economy is much better, so the mood on the campus is positive,” said Praveen, a student from the placement committee at IIM-B.
The institute is expecting over 100 companies to visit its campus in the next one week. The batch has 266 students. Last year, nearly 27 per cent of the batch opted for the banking, financial services and insurance (BSFI) sector, 23 per cent for consulting, 20 per cent for sales and marketing, 16 per cent for general management, 7 per cent for investment banking and the rest for IT, PE and education. Major recruiters for the institute in the past have been the Boston Consulting group, Bain & Co, Citigroup, HSBC, McKinsey & Co, A T Kearney, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, TVS Capital and Booz & Co, among others.
Meanwhile, the placement process is on at the institute’s executive management programme called ePGP, where nearly 70 per cent of the participants are learnt to have been placed. Nearly 50 companies have already visited the campus and 20-25 more are expected till the end of March. Companies from verticals like IT, pharma, infrastructure, power, manufacturing and banking are the major recruiters.
Meanwhile, the final placement process at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, (IIML) is almost over and is likely to be closed in a couple of days. So far, over 300 offers have been made to 316 second-year management students by 100-odd recruiters. However, some students also opted out of the final placements to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.
“The placement season is much better than last year, since the private sector is more aggressive in hiring and the students are also not too keen on seeking job security of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), unlike last year. We were also able to rope in some new recruiters this year,” a member of the placement committee told Business Standard.
Besides IT and FMCG, the financial sector has also started recruiting vigourously. Last year, the economic meltdown had kept some key recruiters away from the campus, while 15 top PSUs and ‘navratnas’, including Coal India Ltd (CIL), Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) had recruited 65 students from IIM-L.
Although, as a policy, IIM-L does not reveal salary levels offered to its students, sources said it was comparable with its older counterparts. “Several of our students were offered senior-level profiles because almost 90 per of our candidates had prior work experience, which is highest among all the IIMs,” he added.
From the next academic session, IIM-L will increase the number of seats to around 415 from 380 at present, Director Devi Singh said.
