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| Illustration: SUDEEP CHAUDHURI |
The problem is that the IIMs, whose elite students are used to being feted enthusiastically by campus recruiters from top firms, are simply not used to such cavalier treatment. In the usual course of events, come the first week of March, the campus is flooded with top global companies, their recruiters trying to bag students from the flagship twoyear post graduate programme in business administration. “Given the larger economic scenario, this was an expected situation. It isn’t that there is a dearth of companies seeking to recruit — just that maybe the usual top notch ones are missing,” says a student at IIM-B, on condition of anonymity.
| HARD NUMBERS IIM-AHMEDABAD 2008: 255 students placed in six days 2009: 259 students placed in nine days with 32 percent less salaries IIM-BANGALORE 2008: 133 students out of 256 found jobs within two days of the placement week 2009: Placement period extended indefinitely IIM-CALCUTTA 2008: 291 students placed in four days with average salary of Rs16.4 lakh 2009: Two weeks of placement process still underway IIM-LUCKNOW 2008: 554 job offers to 256 students 2009: Placement process still underway IIM-KOZHIKODE 2008: 402 job offers (from 105 companies) to 178 students 2009: Placement process that started on March 2 still underway |
Besides the extended timeframe, the number of companies invited to participate in the recruitment process has also gone up. While speaking to the press, Professor Sourav Mukherji, chairperson of the placements committee at IIM-B, said that around 120 to 130 companies have been invited this year — compared to 60 or 65 companies that have come calling in previous years. “The companies are downsizing and there is a freeze on recruitment. We have to ensure then that more companies participate. We expect companies to pick up about two or three students, in comparison to the four students per company previously,” he said, in explanation of the rising number of invited companies.
The additions to the guest list represent a realisation of the new reality: until recently, one in every three companies that wanted to come to the recruitment party would be rejected by the institute.
The scenario at other IIMs is no different. Besides Bengaluru, there are six others: Ahmedabad, Indore, Lucknow, Kolkata, Shillong and Kozhikode. In their attempt to widen the net of recruiting companies, these IIMs have knocked on every possible door — including those of the 3,000-odd alumni who are in senior positions. “We are aware that times are bad. We have contacted almost anyone and everyone for campus placements,” IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) director Samir Barua recently told reporters in the city.
At IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C), the agenda is only slightly different. Both faculty and students are sorely missing their Day- Zero slot, the most sought after timeframe allotted at the start of the placement process. It helps corporates pick the crème de la crème from the institute. Still, not too many students are complaining: out of a batch of 260, only 25 remain unemployed to date.
For their counterparts at IIM-A, the placement process was also promising: the placement period that ended on March 5 saw all graduating students from the post-graduate programme being successfully placed with 95 different companies. However, it did take longer than the usual week. “This is tension time. The top recruiters are not there,” says Mihir Lal, media coordinator for IIM-A’s student placement committee. Companies that did hire IIM-A students included Jaypee Capital and Unicon Securities with 12 recruitments each, and the Union Bank of India with 18 offers. The institute saw a “lower number of offers from international banks and international offers from Indian firms.”
The panic began early: across campuses, the warning sign was the fact that offers from companies where students finished their summer placements just didn’t come in. “I still distinctly remember the celebrations after our internship placements. There were quite a few who were placed abroad and were all set to join these firms after graduation. In a couple of months, with the recession, things have changed drastically,” said a student at IIM-C.
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| Happy days still PSUs are back on IIM campuses to check out students |
The other distressing — but inevitable, given the recession — development, of course, is the sharp fall in the kinds of salaries offered. Officials at IIM-A confirm that the average salary for domestic offers was Rs 12.17 lakh, while the highest offer for an international placement peaked at Rs 1 crore, a 45 percent dip from earlier years.
“You can safely call it a 50 percent cut. The bulk of the students have opted for state-owned companies, which they would not have done even two years ago,” says Professor Rudranil Sengupta, who has been monitoring the placement charts of IIM-C for more than a decade. “It’s a tough year, a really tough year for students. I have personally told them to pick up whatever they get,” he told TEHELKA.
He points to the new trend in the IIMs — the presence of public sector enterprises (PSUs). IIM-A saw companies like Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the Securities Trading Corporation of India among a slew of first-time recruiters. Consequently, salaries on offer were far lower than those usually offered by global investment and financial firms.
Other IIM watchers are more sanguine about the entry of PSUs into the recruitment bazaar. “PSUs, thanks to their revised pay structure, are now getting good responses from top-notch institutes like IIMs and IITs,” says Standing Conference of Public Enterprises Chairman Sarthak Behuria. He cites the example of state-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, which picked up nearly 400 engineers from IITs and — after 10 long years — will participate in IIM campus recruitment.
THE PRESENCE of state-owned companies has also meant a move away from the traditional sector of financial services and consultancy, although the numbers at IIM-A are still in tune with those of 2007 and 2008: 39 percent of the students placed chose to work in the finance sector and 24 percent opted for the consulting segment. Officials say that that the decision of over 100 students to opt for jobs within the financial sector, despite the ongoing global financial crisis, reflects a longterm career choice.
Still, despite the shrinking number of jobs and accompanying compensation packages, the graduating students at IIMs are a less harassed lot than their counterparts from other business schools. In several institutes, campus placements have been cancelled entirely, leaving students completely in the lurch. Mumbai-based Mihir Sharma, a student at a local MBA institute in the city, is very disturbed. “I fought with my parents to pursue an MBA degree. I quit my job at a call centre, took a loan and enrolled myself here. Who is even going to look at my resume now?”
Long considered almost a guarantee of a high-paying job, students of elite institutions such as the IIMs are now discovering that the global economic crisis has meant that the MBA, once a giltedged security, is also showing distinct signs of tarnish.