Consulting continues to rule roost at B-school placements

Consulting firms recruit 30% and 23% of the total batches of IIM-Bangalore and IIM-Kozhikode, respectively

The consulting sector has emerged the top recruiter in B-schools this year. Consulting firms recruited 30 per cent and 23 per cent of the total batches of Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore (IIM-B) and IIM Kozhikode (IIM-K), respectively.

Among non-IIM B-schools such as SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) and XLRI, too, consulting companies maintained a dominant presence. At SPJIMR, 17 per cent of the batch was placed in top consulting firms such as the Boston Consulting Group, Cognizant Business Consulting, and KPMG, among others. E-commerce and finance were the other two top recruiters at B-schools this year.

Placements at XLRI saw banking, financial services and insurance and consulting firms recruiting in large numbers with 40 per cent of the business management students being offered roles in finance and consulting domains.

While IIM-B, IIM-K, XLRI and SP Jain have concluded their placements, IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) concluded the first cluster of its final placement process. The firms that participated in Cluster 1 of IIM-A were from international trade; investment banking and markets; management consulting and private equity, and venture capital and hedge funds. At IIM-A, Accenture Strategy made the highest number of offers - 21 (including pre-placement offers) in Cluster 1. Finance firms offered roles in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and capital markets across functions and geographies.

At IIM-B, Amazon and Snapdeal made 17 offers each. Flipkart, Urban Ladder, AskmeBazaar, Hopscotch, CarTrade, Proptiger, Quickr, CommonFloor and Olacabs were the other recruiters from e-commerce space.

IIM-K saw 347 students participating in the placement process with 359 offers being made to them. Recruiters included Goldman Sachs, IBM Consulting, KPMG, Samsung, Snapdeal and Vodafone, which made a total of 73 offers; new recruiters included Axis Bank, Bluestone, Britannia, Cinepolis, Future Group, HP, Heinz, Hexaware, Idea, Infosys Management Consulting, InMobi, Lenovo, Snapdeal, Tata Communications, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and ZS Associates, among others.

Kulbhushan Balooni, director, IIM-K, said, "Final placements at IIM Kozhikode for the Batch of 2015 saw a speedy close this year with the entire batch getting placed in a record 10 days."

The final placement season for the post graduate programme in IIM-B's class of 2013-15 concluded with participation by top recruiters from across sectors. Around 150 companies made 450 offers across 200 profiles.

"The 2015 final placements were extremely well received and supported by all participating organisations. The entire process was smooth and organised given the large number of companies participating each day," said Sankarshan Basu, chairperson, career development services, IIM Bangalore.

The average annual compensation figure at IIM-K stood at Rs 14.92 lakh a year. A total of 97 recruiters participated in the final placements, with 34 being first-time recruiters. The B-school saw a highest domestic salary of Rs 29.5 lakh per annum.

SPJIMR saw a 5.8 per cent rise in the average salaries - from Rs 17.2 lakh last year to Rs 18.2 lakh. The B-school saw 78 companies coming to the campus. About 80 per cent of the batch received offers of Rs 15 lakh and above, while the median salary for the batch of 232 students was Rs 17 lakh.

The median salary offered to the XLRI batch was Rs 17 lakh per annum, while the minimum was Rs 12 lakh per annum.