Consulting firms top recruiters at XIM-B placements

The sector accounted for 30% of the total placements for its flagship MBA programme students

Consulting sector has stolen the show at the annual placement season of Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar (XIM-B), one of the premier B schools of the country, emerging as the top recruiter. The sector accounted for 30 per cent of the total placements for its flagship MBA programme students.

The average salary offered by consulting firms stood at Rs 12.74 lakhs with the highest annual compensation of Rs 20.29 lakh given by Deloitte. One student has bagged an international offer with a package of USD 34,733 per annum.

"With the government keen to source external expertise for planning and execution of the projects, there is increasing need of manpower by the consulting companies. There is also requirement of skill based interventions which the government departments may not have for the execution of the projects," said Niraj Kumar, professor at XIM-B.

The average annual compensation package of the students of 2013-15 batch stood at Rs 12.65 lakh for the Business Management stream, marginally up from Rs 12.08 lakh for 2012-14 batch, even as the premier institute continued to record 100 per cent placement.

The 2013-15 batch had 239 students, of whom nine students opted out of the placement process.

About 58 companies participated in the annual placement process, "Xuberance 2015", to select students from MBA (BM) stream, out of which 23 companies were new recruiters.

The newly formed Xavier University-Bhubaneswar will award the MBA degrees for the first time this year. Earlier XIM-B was an autonomous institute functioning under the guidance of Jesuit Society.

"The economy has shown signs of improvement and the profile of students in the passing out batch was better than previous years. This year's 100 per cent placement is despite the increase in number of seats," said Savita Mohanty, placement coordinator at XIMB.

Thirty four students were extended pre-placement offers (PPOs) and pre-placement interview (PPI) from their summer internship organisations.

In placements, consulting sector was followed by sales and marketing (27per cent), systems (20 per cent), finance (17 per cent) and strategy and operations (six per cent).

Among the financial services companies, Goldman Sachs has offered the highest package of 20 lakhs while in the sales and marketing segment, the maximum offer of Rs 20.5 lakh has come from Hindustan Coco Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd (HCCBL). In strategy and operation spectrum, Amazon has offered the highest compensation of Rs 16 lakhs and in the systems domain, the maximum salary of Rs 13.42 lakh per annum has been offered by IBM.

All the 56 outgoing students of MBA (Human Resource Management) stream are placed with an average annual compensation package of Rs 11.39 lakhs per annum. The highest salary stood at Rs 20.50 lakh per annum while the median annual pay package was calculated at Rs 10.73 lakhs.

The institute also recorded full placement for its Rural Management students with highest salary touching Rs 12.44 lakhs per annum. The average salary for the stream was Rs 6.74lakh per year.

Speaking on the occasion, Father Paul Frenandes, vice chancellor, XUB, said the university has rolled out Master of Science (Finance) in collaboration with Fordham University, New York, USA, one of its kinds in the country from the academic session of 2015.