At IIM-A, finance still rules with 32% placement

Despite the global financial crisis, finance continued to rule the roost at the summer placements of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A). Although a far cry from the 51.3 per cent last year, the sector saw the highest percentage of acceptance at 32 per cent this year.

While consulting came a close second at 26 per cent, marketing was the largest gainer from previous years with 23 per cent of the batch choosing to opt for marketing roles.

Among the first timers that visited the premier institute include the Planning Commission of India, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Forward Markets Commission (FMC), Booz & Company and UK-based Oliver Wyman. While four students were placed with the Planning Commission, IFMR Trust made the maximum number of offers at 16.

“The decrease in the number of offers made in the financial sector should be attributed to the turmoil in the financial market and not the overall global meltdown,” said Samir Barua, director of IIM-A.

Close to 300 Post Graduate Programme (PGP) students were eligible for summer placements this season due to a considerable increase in batch size to the 117 firms which visited the campus this year, compared to 90 last year.

Even as the absence of Lehman Brothers, which took 15 students for placements last year, was largely felt, the summer internship recruitment process saw over 90 international offers made to students across slots and functions.

However in many cases, these offers were turned down in favour of Indian offers. “When it came to the international offers, this year, more number of students have preferred Asian countries compared to western countries,” added Barua.

Other than banks and consulting firms, many general management roles offered by the Aditya Birla Group and TAS and marketing roles offered by P&G and HUL among others, will take students abroad for the duration of their internships.

The first day of the summer placements, which spanned from November 13-18, saw major global banks and consulting firms on the campus; the banking fraternity, represented by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Rothschild and UBS among others were very visible and made several international offers with attractive summer packages.

Among the consulting firms, Booz & Co, a first time recruiter in the summer process, made three offers — the highest for the firm across campuses. McKinsey & Company had the highest number of acceptances across consulting firms with five students choosing to join them next summer. The first day of placements saw over 80 offers being made to students and by the end of Day Zero, around 115 students had been placed.

Continuing with its tradition of being an incubation ground for top-class entrepreneurs, IIM-A gave students the option of taking up internships with start-up firms and successful entrepreneurs, of which this year, around 15 students will do internships with entrepreneurial firms.

As for the summer placement for the two year Agri-Business Management (ABM) programme, participating companies gave 28 offers to the 21 students of the batch. The wide spectrum of sectors included consulting, carbon and energy management, marketing, retail, merchandising and micro-finance.