Management consulting dominates lateral placements at IIM-B

The recently-concluded lateral placement process at IIM-B saw the emergence of management consultants as the preferred choice for more than 55 per cent offers.

Deloitte had a total of 13 acceptances followed by Infosys Consulting at 11. Some of the other companies that offered Management Consulting positions were Accenture, Ernst & Young, PwC, Virtusa, Cognizant Business Consulting and Wipro. Several firms, including ZS Associates, Siemens Management Consulting & Infosys Consulting, recruited exclusively from IIM-B.

The number of lateral placement offers from the financial services sector also saw an increase. Prominent banks, several private equity firms and a hedge fund participated in the lateral recruitment process. A Dutch bank offered a student an international assignment. Yes Bank and Chrys Capital were the largest recruiters in this segment.

Students with a minimum of 22 months of full time work experience were interviewed for offers. The lateral placement process at IIM-B this year witnessed an increase of more than 100 per cent in the number of participating firms compared to the previous year. Significantly, acceptances of lateral offers by students rose by 70 per cent year-on-year.

Close to 15 per cent of lateral offers were made in the general management sector. The Aditya Birla Group, Hinduja Group, Philips, Schneider and the Adani Group made multiple lateral offers. Product Management roles were offered by HCL, Indus Valley Partners, InfoEdge, McAfee, Microsoft and NetApp among others. Some of the other firms that participated in the process were DPDHL (Singapore), Google, Heidrick & Struggles L & T Group and SunEdison.

The final placement process for the IIM-Bangalore graduating PGP Class of 2011 will begin on March 05. The process will oversee placements for a batch size of 348 students, 16 of whom have chosen to defer their placements in pursuit of entrepreneurial ventures. Over 100 companies will participate in this year’s final placement season.