B-school summer placements surge; BFSI, e-commerce firms top recruiters

Summer placements, where companies hire students for internships in the following year, have concluded on a high at some of the top B-schools, including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). 

From wrapping up the process within a day or two and placing 100 per cent students to a rise in the number of offers and stipends, top B-schools have witnessed a significant improvement compared with last year. IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), and Delhi University’s (DU’s) Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) have had successful summer placements this year.

Consulting and e-commerce majors led by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Accenture, and Amazon largely called the shots with some of the campuses known to have established themselves in certain sectors, such as IIM Calcutta for finance and IIM Bangalore for e-commerce.

BCG emerged as the top recruiter at IIM Ahmedabad and XLRI – Xavier School of Management, making the highest number of offers at 20 and 13, respectively. Amazon, on the other hand, made the maximum number of offers at IIM Bangalore at 36. Consulting was the top sector at IIM Bangalore, accounting for 27.8 per cent of the 442 offers, followed by IIM Lucknow (22 per cent) and JBIMS (16 per cent).

Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) was the top sector at JBIMS and IIM Calcutta, making up 30 per cent and 26 per cent of the offers, respectively.

Citibank was the largest recruiter in the sector. Others like Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs were among top recruiters at IIM Calcutta.

This year, IIM Ahmedabad also invited more private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms, considering the rising number of students with the said background.

“In the pursuit to ensure that students get to work in the sectors of their choice, this year we increased the number of firms participating in the PE/VC cohort to double digits in line with the increasing number of students with relevant backgrounds. Further, in the current placement season, we saw students letting go of offers from management consulting firms and private equity firms to join the sectors of their choice in subsequent clusters through dream applications,” said Kautuk Kushansh, recruitment secretary at IIM-A.

Students at IIM-A were provided the flexibility of making 'dream' applications to firms of their choice in a subsequent cluster even with an offer in hand. This year, 110 students made over 300 dream applications at IIM-A.

IIM Lucknow achieved 100 per cent summer placements for its 34th batch of 455 students, with its recruitment drive seeing participation of more than 140 domestic and international recruiters.

Stipends offered by recruiters at these campuses were also higher than last year, according to the institutes, though they could not provide the previous year's details. Delhi University's FMS not only managed to place all its students for summer internships within two days but also attracted the highest stipend of over Rs 200,000 a month.

With the summer placement for the batch of 2018-20 at XLRI - Xavier School of Management comprising 362 students wrapping up in just two days, the process saw the highest stipend of Rs 165,000 a month being offered. The process saw the participation of over 95 companies offering roles across domains, including consulting, finance, sales and marketing, operations, business development (BM), human resources (HR) and industrial relations (IR).

The Hhighest stipend offered at JBIMS was Rs 550,000 for two months, with the average stipend being Rs 189,000. The top 10 per cent of the batch took home a stipend of Rs 324,000, while the top 30 per cent was offered Rs 280,000 on average.

Based on the rise in stipends, number of offers and student interest in interning at these firms, B-schools anticipate a healthy final placement.