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The job market for college pass-outs may not be rosy, but if one is a management student at one of the top 20 institutes in India, the picture is different. Pre-placement offers (PPOs) at leading business schools in India have been as good, if not better, than last year. And, the PPO season isn’t over yet.
Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Calcutta recorded 69 PPOs; total offers, including pre-placement interviews, stood at 101. “IIM-Calcutta students have already received PPOs for highly sought-after investment banking roles from distinguished firms such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citi Bank. In fact, Citi Bank offered its only investment banking division PPO across all IIMs to a student of IIM-Calcutta,” said Anjanjot Singh, IIM-Calcutta placement team.
At IIM-Calcutta, the top four management consulting firms — McKinsey & Co, Bain & Co, BCG and AT Kearney — offered 27 PPOs for a total of 30 interns — a 90 per cent conversion rate. Procter & Gamble, Hindustan Unilever, Vodafone, Dr Reddy’s, Tata Steel, etc, offered PPOs for sales and marketing roles.
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IIM-Bangalore, too, has seen a benign PPO season. Sapna Agarwal, head (career development services), IIM-Bangalore, said the institute had received about 55 PPOs till the first week of October. “We had 97 PPOs last year and hope to clock the same number this year, too. We still have few more months to go,” she said. As in previous years, consulting firms were the first to account for PPOs, she added. Apart from consulting firms, companies from sectors such as information technology and banking also offered PPOs at IIM-Bangalore.
Typically, the PPO process at business schools begins mid-July and continues till November or December.
While the job market was dull at the beginning of this year, human resource consultants expect a reversal of the trend towards the year-end. The Naukri Job Speak Index, which includes jobs posted and jobs refreshed (online jobs, as well as jobs acquired from existing clients, by Naukri’s tele-calling team) for September stood at 1,238, a three per cent rise in hiring compared to August.
Compared to last year, institutes expect a rise in salary offers this year. Kulbhushan Balooni, professor and chairperson (placements), IIM-Kozhikode, said, “We see a rise in salaries as a natural progression in the job market this year.” He added generally, PPOs were offered by brands that have sufficient bandwidth to absorb good talent, despite economic fluctuations. Therefore, PPOs aren’t affected by a slowdown.
Not just IIMs, other large business schools have also seen good growth in PPOs. Rajiv Mishra, professor and chairperson (placements), XLRI, said this academic year had seen a rise in the number of PPOs and PPIs (pre-placement interviews). “So far, we have had 37 PPOs and 28 PPIs (which is 46 per cent of the student population for which the PPO/PPI results are declared) being offered. The number is expected to increase further in the near future,” he said, adding at XLRI, too, the economic slowdown hadn’t impacted PPOs this year.
Though the banking and financial services industry was expected to go slow on PPOs, institutes said the offers hadn’t seen any change. Debashis Sanyal, dean of the school of business management, NMIMS, said this season, 82 offers had been received, primarily due to the good performance of students in their summer internships. Companies accounting for PPOs in this business school included Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan, Microsoft, ITC, Wipro, Cognizant Business Consulting, Cummins, ICICI Bank, HSBC and Dabur. Offers for which formal announcements are awaited include those from Group M, Capgemini, Michael Page, Reliance Industries Limited, Glenmark and Boehringer Ingelheim.
“Our final placements are in January and we are optimistic of a successful placement season this time as well. Despite the lull in the markets, there are companies that rightly view resource as a long-term investment and are hiring judiciously. Such companies do not compromise on salaries. The way ahead for us is to prepare our students for interviews, have a better connect with the industry, reach out to more companies and scout for more profiles,” said Sanyal.
While this isn’t a norm, PPOs are usually given on the basis of an individual student’s performance during a summer internship at a particular company. Human resource consultants say companies prefer to hire people they have interacted with earlier, as they would be familiar with the work-style.
Certain institutes do not have summer internships. Abbasali Gabula, deputy director (external relations & administration), SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), said the institute didn’t have the concept of summer projects at companies, adding all its students spent the summer working with non-governmental organisations in rural areas.
“Our students do their corporate projects in September and October. PPOs start coming in November & December. The past record is more than 50 per cent of our class gets PPO & PPIs. We are sure we would maintain the record this year, too. Though there is an impact of a slowdown on most business schools, SPJIMR has been beating the trend. We see no reason why this year, too, we wouldn’t beat the trend. The process of PPOs would be completed in December,” added Gabula.
Experts said the situation in smaller business schools in non-metro cities might not be as good. Apart from PPOs, which were rare in these schools, the slowdown could also hit final-year placements at these schools, they said.
JOBS GALORE
- Pre-placement offers (PPOs) at leading business schools in India have been as good, if not better, than last year
- Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Calcutta recorded 69 PPOs
- IIM-Bangalore, said the institute had received about 55 PPOs till the first week of October, said a spokesperson
