Cautious optimism. This is the mood among students of various business schools across the country this placement season. The economy is recovering, recruiters are planning to hire more students this year, and many new recruiters are visiting campuses to scout for talent — all these factors seem to indicate that all is well. But students, who have seen their seniors disappointed after last year’s placements, are cautious. Though they’re hoping to land good jobs, they’re trying not to expect too much.
“One thing is for sure, placements have improved,” says Rahul Tom Joseph, member of IIM Lucknow’s Recruitment Cell. “Financial sector firms are recruiting this year and on a larger scale than last year. This is very good news. On the whole, companies are recruiting more, and newer companies are open to recruiting from the IIMs,” he says.
This trend holds across B-school campuses. This year, IIM Calcutta — where placements began on March 6 — will see some companies back on campus after a gap of a year.
“Temasek Holdings will be recruiting from IIM-C this year. So will UBS, which will hire exclusively from our campus this year. Oliver Wyman, a global consulting firm, has also confirmed participation in the process for the first time. So in all, we’re seeing a good response from firms,” says Samyukktha Thirumeni, External Relations Secretary of the institute.
At IIM-Kozhikode, Deloitte Consulting and Cognizant Business Consulting — which made just two offers last year — have made double digit offers this year. Students from the institute have also been hired by Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland, Yes Bank, ITC; some of whom had skipped the process last year.
Lateral placements — usually held in the month before the final placements, in which firms recruit students who have prior work experience — have also been better this year. At IIM Calcutta, the number of lateral offers has doubled compared to last year. Of the batch of 280, over 100 students received offers during the laterals process.
The number of offers made to XLRI students with prior work experience has increased by two-and-a-half times. At MDI Gurgaon, the number of companies attending the lateral placement process has doubled. Even the profiles and pay are significantly better, says a member of the Placement Committee.
According to Sapna Agarwal, Head of Career Development Services, IIM-B, firms are looking to recruit larger numbers from the institute this year. “Last year, our whole batch was placed. But the more visible firms like the investment banks were hiring fewer people. A company that would make five or six offers in a good year made, say, two last year. This has a trickle-down effect. But this year, companies are looking to recruit much more,” she says.
Firms also feel that recruiting from an IIM is the best investment in talent, as the batch sizes have increased. “Earlier, we felt that it was better to hire a topper from a non-IIM than to hire a middle/ lower rung student from an IIM. But now, IIM batch sizes are going up and the quality of students in some of the other institutes has gone down. This won’t be too visible this year, but it will be in the next few years. We’re going back to the IIMs after a few years, and we believe that it is worth it,” says a recruiter from the banking industry, who did not wish to be named.
Other B-schools too are expecting better placements this year. At the K J Somaiya Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai, the lateral placements have been smoother than last year. Several IT, ITES and financial services firms who had not hired students last year, are looking to hire from K J Somaiya this year.
At PESIT, Bangalore, 16 MBA students have already been selected by various companies at salaries 30 per cent higher than those offered last year, even before placements have officially begun. “Placements will go on till June-July as students are completing their internships right now, but we have received a good response,” says K R Ravi, Senior Lecturer and Placement Officer.
New formats
This year, IIM Ahmedabad has introduced a new ‘cohort-based’ placement system and has done away with the traditional day-based format in which all companies visited the campus over a few days. This time, the placements are being held over the weekends. Companies that offer similar pay, profiles, roles and locations are clubbed together in ‘cohorts’, with several cohorts making a ‘cluster’. Each weekend, the campus sees one cluster of firms arriving for the process.
This new process is expected to allow students to interview with more firms and get to know them better before they decide. “It will ensure a better talent fit between students and companies,” says Mansi Chitalia, member of the Student Placement Committee, IIM-A.
Other institutes like MDI and IIM-K have also opted for a more spread-out process. Soumendu Roy, Student Co-ordinator of MDI’s Placement Committee, says: “We’ve scheduled the process differently this year, after consulting the companies. It has taken time but has proved to be good, because it gives more time for students to interact with the companies.”
Observers say this is an indicator of the shift in power, where recruiters gain the upper hand. “It is generally accepted that placements will never come back to the 2008 level,” says Apurv Pandit of pagalguy.com, a website for MBA students and aspirants, which has over three lakh registered users.
“There are marked changes in hiring now, and B-schools are following a more spread-out process. Traditionally, with the older formats, B-schools had the upper hand. Now, the companies can dictate terms. Today, no school expects to place students with the same number of offers as they used to do previously,” he adds.
All B-schools agree that placements have still not reached the highs of 2007-’08. As Prof Prafulla Agnihotri of IIM-C puts it, “Things look brighter than they did last year. But I would say that we have to be cautious. The situation is not as good as it was two years ago. The skies have not fully opened up yet.”
Coffee and conversation: Buddy
network
The old method of assessing a candidate for a job within a formal set up is passé. Companies are now looking for newer, more informal ways to pick the right candidates
“You don’t need to create a stressful situation in order to pick the right candidate. We believe that we should bring out the best of each candidate, not the worst. So our approach is more relaxed and engaging,” says Jai Sinha, Managing Director of Booz & Company India, a consulting firm.
This clearly shows in the way the company interacts with students before and during the placement process. In the colleges it recruits from, the company hosts various events — like coffee evenings and dinners with shortlisted candidates — before the interviews. It also assigns up ‘buddies’ — members of the previous batch, who will interact with one student each — to all shortlisted candidates. “The buddies call the candidates, discuss case interviews, and help the candidate know more about our company. If the candidate wants to know something about the company and is hesitant to approach the interviewers, then he can ask the buddy to clarify his doubts,” Sinha explains.
Saurav Arora, Senior VP, Jaypee Capital Services, also prefers this method. His firm has hired five students from IIM-A this year. “Our interviews are conducted differently. Though they are serious interviews, the approach is more relaxed — it’s like a conversation. I enjoy talking to the students and so I prefer doing it this way.
We end up having conversations with students after the presentations,” he says. Arora says that the alumni were involved in the entire process — from making case studies to short listing candidates, and in the interview rounds as well.
Expertspeak
The placement process is on and we are hopeful because the summer placements went well, and also because the laterals that got over last month have been much better than last year. During the summer placements, we saw that the banks are back and are hiring aggressively. Companies that didn’t participate in the process last year are coming back this year. Many of our students have also received Pre Placement Offers
(PPOs).
Pravin Gopalakrishnan
IIM-B media cell
Kal, aaj, kal: A first-person account
I was part of the Placement Committee last year and saw what happened. Initially students did not expect it to be so bad. The market had been at its peak in 2007 and this was a drastic change. Fewer recruiters came to the campus because of the recession. The situation was grim.
People got jobs in the fields they wanted, but not at their dream company/ salary. They didn’t have too much choice either. Very few recruiters came to campus, and the number of jobs offered by each recruiter went down.
Many students became aware that the situation was not specific to our college. For our generation, it was the first time we were seeing such a downturn. When I saw what happened during placements last year, I was very worried — because there are more students in our batch than there were in the previous one. So if the situation had remained the same, placements would have been a bigger challenge for us. Last year, we kept asking the recruiters what they would predict for 2010.
Finally, this year, when I was placed with a good firm, I had mixed feelings: I felt happy that I got the kind of job I wanted and I also heaved a sigh of relief. I was very relieved indeed.
Dhruv Muchhal
IIM-Kozhikode, Batch of 2010