IIM-C third PGPEX batch gets plethora of offers

With more recruiters and offers, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) has concluded better placement for its third batch of post graduate programme for executives (PGPEX). Offers have been made and accepted at the level of director and vice-president (VP).

Contrary to last year, the number of offers and participation of recruiters were higher this year. Sixty companies took part in the final placement with 45 offers for 47 students (Batch strength: 51, 4 students opted out of placement assistance) in respect to 33 companies with 30 offers for 34 students (Batch strength: 37, 3 students opted out of placement assistance) last year.

There were substantial increases in both mean and median salaries over comparable figures of last year. However, the increase in median salary was greater than that of the mean. The average salary this year is Rs 18.4 lakh, compared to Rs 18 lakh last year. Like last year, the highest salary remained at Rs 35 lakh. This year there was an international offer which was not there last year.

With the implementation of the Sixth Central Pay Commission (6th CPC) recommendations last year, 3 students from the batch who had Navaratna PSU backgrounds went back to their parent organisations. They had higher experience than the batch average of about 10 years – with the minimum among them being 13 years. Three students with private sector backgrounds re-joined their former firms.

The recruiting giants from India and multinationals include McKinsey & Co., Deloitte, TCS, Hewlett-Packard, MindTree Consulting, Amazon Consulting, Accenture and Sapient in Consulting, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Rediff.com, HCL and Infosys BPO in IT/ITES/Telecom, Opus Soft, Google (India) and Zycus in Sales and Marketing, KPIT Cummins, Wellspun Group and Siemens in Project Management/Operations and Directi Internet Solutions, Infosys, Tata International and Manipal Education Group in Strategy and Business Development.

In terms of sectoral distribution, nearly 50 per cent of the jobs this year were in the consulting domain as compared with 31 per cent last year. There were fewer jobs in sales and marketing as well as IT/ITES/Telecom sector. However, this year, saw jobs in strategy and business development. The offers were as follows: 22 in Consulting, 9 in IT/ITES/Telecom, 6 in Sales/Marketing, 5 in Strategy/Business Development and 3 in Project Management/Operations.

About 52 per cent of the students joining the programme had work experience in IT/ITES sector. Therefore, in keeping with the last year's trend, PGPEX placements allowed students to leverage their experience and stay within the same sector or leverage the PGPEX programme to switch over to other sectors. One student rejected an offer to join a network security start-up.

IIMC had launched the One Year Full time residential programme for Executives (PGPEX) in 2006. On successful completion of the programme, participants are awarded "Post graduate Diploma in Management for Executives" (PGPEX).