International offers hit pre-pandemic levels as B-schools see robust hiring

B-schools say international offers have come in the wake of digitisation across sectors along with rise in tech-backed roles, thereby opening doors across geographies for management grads

Not just a rise in salaries, top business schools (B-schools) including leading Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have also seen international offers touch pre-pandemic levels backed by technology-led roles this year.

"IIM Ahmedabad has seen one of the best placement seasons ever and this change can be attributed to the markets opening up after the pandemic. We reported 100 per cent placements this year as well with companies from across sectors and geographies recruiting in significantly higher numbers as compared to previous years," Ankur Sinha, Chairperson Placements, IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) told Business Standard on international offers.

Of the 190 firms participating with around 220 different roles in the placement process in 2022 at IIM-A, firms which made the most offers on campus included Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Accenture with the former extending 47 roles including pre-placement offers (PPOs) and the latter 32.

Similarly, IIM Bangalore (IIM-B) which again saw Accenture (51) and BCG (30) make the highest number of offers, international offers have been better than pre-pandemic levels. Confirming the same, U Dinesh Kumar, Chairperson, Career Development Services, IIM-B attributed the trend to the resurgence in economy while adding that the international offers were mostly from sectors like consulting, finance and general management.

Overall, consulting companies made the maximum of 248 offers at IIM-B comprising other top recruiters such as Kearney, Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Tata Consultancy Services, Alvarez & Marsal, Arthur D. Little, Deloitte, Infosys Consulting, KPMG, Strategy&, Auctus Advisors, Oliver Wyman, IBM Consulting, and EY-Parthenon Singapore.

IIM Kozhikode (IIM-K) too saw international offers being made by companies like CarDekho, Omnibiz and Tolaram Group even as the B-school placed its largest batch size of 546 students for its flagship post graduate programme (PGP) along with the inaugural batches of PGP Finance (PGP-F) & PGP Liberal Studies and Management (PGP-LSM), the two new full time MBA programmes started in 2020.

According to B-schools, the international offers have come in the wake of digitisation across sectors along with rise in technology-backed roles, thereby opening doors across geographies for management graduates.

The other healthy trend has been the pre and post management program salary difference among executives such as that at the Indian School of Business (ISB). ISB recorded a 20.78 per cent rise in the average cost-to-company (CTC) compared to last year in its placement process for the Class of 2022 of Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP).

At Rs 34.07 lakh, the average accepted CTC was higher than last year's Rs 28.21 lakh. However, the differential between pre-ISB and post-ISB salary stood at 173.67 per cent, reflecting the career growth among ISB candidates.

Moreover, around 270 companies made an unprecedented number of 2066 acceptable offers at the end of the placement week with the acceptable offer ratio translating to an average of more than two offers per student, for a batch size of 929 students in Class 2022. Acceptable offer yield per company stood at 7.68, reinforcing organizations' faith in ISB students and indicating the depth and breadth of our relationship with recruiters.

The average salary at XLRI -Xavier School of Management saw an increase of 22.5 per cent to Rs 30.73 lakh per annum from Rs 25.08 lakh per annum in the previous year even as all 427 candidates of postgraduate diploma in management - human resource management and the two-year postgraduate diploma in management-business management were placed.

Apart from an average salary of Rs 30.73 lakh, the business school saw a median salary of Rs 48.42 lakh and Rs 41.2 lakh being offered to the top 10th and 25th percentile, respectively. The highest domestic offer at XLRI, on the other hand, was at over Rs 60 lakh, made by the BFSI sector.

At IIM-K, average salary grew by 31.3 per cent to Rs 29.5 lakh per annum (lpa) over the previous year with the premier B-school also witnessing a 32.5 per cent increase in the median salary to Rs 26.50 lpa over last year.

Meanwhile, IIM Indore (IIM-I) saw its internal record of average package being broken Rs 25.01 lakh, witnessing an increase of six per cent as compared to the previous year while the highest package stood at Rs 49 lakh. Further, the top 100 students bagged packages averaging Rs 37.95 lakh while top 200 students' compensation averaged Rs 32.75 lakh.