The global economic recession came knocking on the doors of the country’s premier B-schools — the seven showpiece Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) — this spring. This year placement offers were hesitant and compensation hampers significantly smaller. Even though most IIM students, long used to being chased by HRD managers of blue-chip companies, were placed, the recently concluded placement process (which is usually over in March first week), stretched to over two weeks, and representatives of high-roller foreign and multinational companies, whose dollar denominated offers are much awaited, were conspicuously absent.
At IIM-Lucknow (IIM-L), the number of job offers this year fell from 496 in 2008 to 284. That means students got fewer job choices, with the institute averaging 1.06 offers this year as against last year’s 2.2. Likewise in IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C), while 291 batch of 2008 students were placed within four days, this year the recruitment process stretched over two weeks. IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B) took an even bigger hit with its recruitment period stretching indefinitely against last year, when mint-fresh MBAs were snapped up within two days.
Against this sombre backdrop, the country’s dull public sector undertakings (PSUs) emerged as unlikely saviours of the IIMs’ collective face. At IIM-L, 14 PSUs including Coal India, SAIL, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, ONGC, SIDBI, and NTPC among others, recruited 65 students. Last year, only three students had signed up with PSUs whose remune-ration packages are benchmarked against those of IAS bureaucrats. “The greater job security, impressive job profiles and improved pay packages made PSUs popular on the IIM-L campus this year,” says Prof. Sushil Kumar, chairman of the institute’s placements committee.
Although this spring, PSUs were the flavour of the recruitment season at IIM campuses, finance and consultancy companies continued to be student favourites. At IIM-L, 40 percent of students opted for finance companies or departments as against 31 percent last year. Sales and marketing jobs were also popular this year with 31 percent of IIM graduates opting for them as against only 18 percent last year. Job offers from foreign companies recorded a sharp decline. At IIM-L only 15 students found jobs abroad as compared to 32 last year.
Moreover while in past years the IIM brand name has attracted corporate recruiters in droves, this year some tough selling was required. For instance, the IIM-L top brass had to make extra efforts to lure recruiters with J.J. Irani, a director of Tata Sons and chairman of the institute’s board of governors, hosting a dinner in Mumbai in January for IIM-L alumni and potential corporate recruiters. All this activity attracted 50 first-time recruiters including Jaypee Capital, Siva Ventures, L’Oreal, Virgin Mobile, Darashaw & Co, Allegro Advisors, Eli-Lily, Jindal Steel, Kellogg, Maersk and Bharti Telesoft.
While glum visages were quite in evidence during placement week at IIM-L, with a large cohort of the institute’s students having signed up with PSUs, there’s a real possibility that there may be a dramatic improvement in the shoddy goods and services provided by PSUs to the long-suffering public. That’s the silver lining.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)