Slowdown not a word at B-school placements

Consulting and I-banking firms steal the show at campus hires this year

'Where's the slowdown?' is the common question asked on B-school campuses. While B-schools agree the market conditions are adverse, they are pleasantly surprised at the participation by major sectors, recruiting in good numbers.

From the Indian Institutes of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and Calcutta (IIM-C) to other major B-schools like Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI) and Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar (XIM-B), campuses have seen traditional sectors recruiting in decent numbers.

At IIM-A, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) emerged as top recruiter across clusters, taking 15 students against 17 last year.

Last year, IBM was the top recruiter from IIM-A, hiring 21 students. Accenture recruited 13 students this year against 14 last year, McKinsey & Company and Capgemini made 10 offers each, and Bain & Company selected nine students from the batch.

"The demand for IIM-A graduates continues to be high, and has overridden concerns of a general slowdown in hiring activities in 2012-13," said Kirti Sharda, chairperson, placement committee.

Other companies which recruited from IIM-A include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Asian Paints, HUL, ITC, Kraft, L'Oréal, Mars, Nestle, P&G and Pepsi, among others.

At IIM-C, the slot zero of final placement saw finance and consulting majors recruiting students from the campus. While 135 offers were made during the premier slot zero held on March 3 and 5, much of it came from finance and consulting sectors.

A total of 25 students from IIM-C have secured final placements in Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co, McKinsey and AT Kearney, along with Accenture Management Consulting, Opera Consulting, and Hay Group among others.

"Finance proved once again to be the stronghold of IIM-C with several top-notch firms coming to the B-school for slot zero placements despite the economic slowdown. Some of the financial majors like JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Standard Chartered among others flocked to the campus to recruit students in large numbers during the slot zero process," IIM-C said in a statement.

At XLRI and XIM-B, finance and consulting majors, followed by information technology (IT) and marketing picked up students. Prominent recruiters at XLRI include Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank, Nomura, Goldman Sachs and Development Bank of Singapore. Standard Chartered Bank was the largest finance recruiter whereas treasury roles were offered by Axis Bank and ICICI Bank. L'Oréal, Airtel, Dr Reddys and L&T Finance offered roles in corporate finance.

"All the major finance, consulting, IT and infrastructure companies have visited our campus, despite the much-anticipated economic slowdown. This has shown that placements have been pretty successful across B-schools this year, especially with finance and investment banks coming back," said Sabita Mohanty, faculty coordinator (placements) at XIM-B, refusing to divulge details.

About 75 recruiters participated at XLRI placement process, with 255 offers being made for a batch of 240 students. The batch size at XIM-B stood at 180 students.

At Mumbai-based Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, the response from companies has been better than last year, said a placement committee member. The institute begins its placements next week, as pre-placement talks on campus are underway.