Financial crisis hits B-schools

In the wake of slowdown in the banking and financial services sector, leading B-schools in the city are gearing up to rope in more recruiters from other sectors like FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), manufacturing, retail and infrastructure to counter any dampening effect on placements in the current year.

Unlike the top B-schools in the country like IIMs whose international job offers are going to be hit by financial market crash in the US, the placement woes of the city’s B-schools seem to stem from a slowdown in the banking and financial services sector in the domestic market.

It may be noted that nearly one-third of the total students pursuing their regular MBA programmes in these B-Schools were absorbed in the banking and financial services sector last year.

“We are expecting a slump in placements in banking and financial services sector and our institute is looking to bring more recruiters from other sectors like FMCG, consulting, marketing and operations”, said an official of the placements committee of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB).

The banking and financial services sector was the biggest recruiter in the XIMB campus in last year’s placements and about 33 per cent of the students were placed in this sector.

Though 35 percent of the current batch of students of XIMB’s regular PGDM programme has opted for specialisation in finance, the figure is set to dip in the ensuing batches if placement prospects in the financial sector do not look up in the near future.

Another city-based B-school, Regional College of Management (RCM) is also set to feel the pinch in the form of dip in placements due to the slowdown in the banking and financial services sector.

“Placements in the banking and financial services sector are going to be hit this year and this will also impact the highest and average placement offers at our campus as over one-third of our previous batch of students were absorbed in this sector ”, said Prabir Pal, director of RCM.

As a cushion to its students, RCM is offering dual specialisation in marketing and finance to offset any potential slump in placement offers from the banking and financial services sector.

“As large private sector banks like ICICI Bank are unlikely to visit our campus this year, we are now banking on smaller private banks like HDFC Bank and also on the Orissa State Cooperative Bank for placements. RCM has also started the process of approaching more recruiters in other sectors like FMCG and manufacturing to ward off any placement crisis”, Pal said.

KIIT School of Management, however, believes that the slowdown in the banking and financial will only have a marginal effect on its placements.

“The slowdown in banking and financial services sector can only have a marginal impact on our placements this year. Smaller private sector banks like HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have been our regular recruiters at our campus and we expect the trend to continue this year as well”, said LK Vaswani, director of KIIT School of Management.

However, the B-school is not leaving any room for complacency and plans to rope in more recruiters from sectors like FMCG, infrastructure, manufacturing, information technology and microfinance.

“With the slowdown in banking and financial services sectors, there is going to be a dip in the number of placement offers this year for our regular MBA students as nearly one-third of our students were absorbed in this sector in last year’s placements. However, we are upbeat on placement offers from other sectors like manufacturing and services except the banking and financial services”, said Biswajeet Pattanayak, director of Asian School of Business Management (ASBM).