India Inc floods IIM students with offers as biz sentiments rise

In what reflects a bounce-back in sentiments,India Inc is going all-out to recruit from IIMs.

In what reflects a bounce-back in economic sentiments,India Inc is going all-out to recruit from Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this season.

Consider this. At IIM Calcutta (IIM-C),multiple companies have given offers in the last few days which has swelled the number of offers received so far to around 225,an increase of 75% from last year. At IIM Kozhikode (IIM-K),the number of offers per company has gone up by close to 30% from 2.66 in 2010 to 3.43 this year.

At IIM-C,more than 200 offers have been made till now,a 60% increase over last years number of offers at the end of the lateral process. More than 50 firms are participating in the lateral hiring process. The lateral placement process is for students with considerable work experience,where candidates are offered roles depending upon the nature and duration of their work-ex.

Significantly,there is also a big increase in the number of new recruiters this season. The lateral process at IIM-C began more than a month ago and will continue till end of this month following which the final placement process will be conducted in the first week of March.

The diversity in the students work experience is highlighted by the highest number of offers made by Amazon across all IIMs as part of the lateral placements for operations profiles, said IIM-C in a statement.

Same is the case with IIM-K where the number of offers have visibly increased.

We have seen 35% of the companies that didnt participate last year giving more than 80 offers. Around 29% of these companies offered roles in marketing and 21% in finance, said Dharmveer Choudhary,member – placement committee,IIM-K.

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IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A),where the placement process began a week ago,till now has seen its first clustercomprising companies across four cohorts of international investment banks,global strategy consulting,global niche consulting and private equity/venture capitalplace students.

Consulting firms BCG and McKinsey gave the highest number of offers. BCG has given 11 offers and McKinsey has given 10 offers,including pre-placement offers. Both have recruited in higher numbers than the previous year, said a statement from the institute. Around 317 students are participating in the placement process this year at the institute.

Last year at IIM-A,more than 40 firms participated in the laterals process and extended more than 100 offers,an increase of four times over 2009. This year,about 35% of the participating companies are new recruiters like ADAG,Airtel,EXL,Fujistu,Glenmark,HP,Idea,Lenovo,MMTC,Mphasis,Videocon,Wipro Consulting and 21% of the new recruiters offered roles in the finance vertical while 29% offered jobs in the sales and marketing vertical.

IIM-A finished the second cluster of the final placement process on Saturday and saw cohorts such as Indian investment banks,corporate leadership programmes and international FMCG firms. EXL Service gave the highest number of offers and international marketing firms gave more offers to students than last year. The prestigious institutes explain that the increase in the number of offers at all campuses could be because the batch size has gone up. Hence,the percentage increase in number of offers would go up automatically, added Choudhary. Last year at IIM-K,the batch size was 250 and it was 185 the year before that. For IIM-C,the 87.5% conversion rate refers to the Big Four consulting firms McKinsey & Co,The Boston Consulting Group,Bain & Co,AT Kearney. Interestingly,the strength of batch at IIM-C stands at 388,largest batch size in the history of all IIMs.