Though the economy is showing signs of slowdown and corporate bottom lines are shrinking, summer placements at the country?s premier management institutes are going on briskly. In fact, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have not only received a greater number of first-time recruiters for summer placements this year but also from sectors that were not very popular before.
For instance, at IIM Ahmedabad, the first batch of summer placements comprised three groups ? international investment banks, global strategy consulting, and private equity, venture capital and investment management firms. More than 20 companies conducted interviews in the first batch, which included regular recruiters like BCG, McKinsey & Co, Bain & Company, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Morgan Stanley. First-time recruiters included a Japanese major, Daiwa Securities. BCG, Royal Bank of Scotland and Accenture made offers in double digits.
Summer placements are different from job placements. During such placements students go through the mandatory summer training. Good summer placements are an indicator of final job placements.
Similarly, at IIM Calcutta, the first day of summer placements saw a total of 90 offers being handed out by investment banks, and consulting and private equity houses.
The day saw a healthy mix of regular and new recruiters with a distinctive offer being made by a steel trading firm. ?There was no dearth of distinctive and first-time offers, the highlight being a role in Duferco, a steel trading group, for their Switzerland office,? said an official statement from IIM Calcutta.
The summer process at IIM Kozhikode saw participation from over 100 firms in total and 35 firms that took part for the first time. Several first-time recruiters included TAS, CLSA, Societe Generale, Amazon, Avalon Consulting, Macquarie Capital, Yahoo, Dabur, RPG Group, Mentor Graphics, Dawn Consulting, Ittiam Systems, UAE Exchange and Herbz, an agri-business and trading house. The batch of 343 students was placed for the summer internships in a month?s time.
The entire process of summer placements for the 2011-13 batch at IIM Lucknow was completed in a record six days for its largest ever batch of 434 students with 583 offers. In fact, the Lucknow B-school became one of the very few campuses in the country to host hedge funds for summer recruitments. ?Some of the other international finance profiles exclusive to IIM Lucknow include investment management, hedge fund and portfolio management, quantitative trading, investment banking, etc, from firms such as Arohi Asset Management Singapore, Silverspring Capital (a Hong Kong-based hedge fund), another hedge fund in Singapore, Fidelity International, among others,? said an official statement from the institution.
For IIM Indore, a total of 120 firms have participated in the process till now. Out of these around 25% are first-time recruiters. Some of the prominent first-time recruiters are AMC, Amazon, Landmark Group, and J&J Consumers, among others. Emergent sectors were education and e-commerce. The highest domestic stipend was Rs 75,000 per month.
Ravish Kumar, recruitment secretary on the IIM Ahmedabad placement committee, commented, ?Despite the market conditions being less buoyant this year, the number of acceptances in the first batch of companies was only marginally lower than last year. This shows the confidence that recruiters have in the IIM-A placement process.?