The Hindu Business Line : What you'll do this summer

When Kumar Gautam, a student of the graduating class of 2005 from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), was offered a Rs 55-lakh-plus-bonuses job by Lehman Brothers last year, he was not surprised. He had spent his summer months there the previous year, learning to work at the investment bank's trading desk. He admits he did not have to negotiate for the salary as his summer internship was with the same company and he had received a pre-placement offer (PPO) a few months before the actual placement season started at IIM-B. "What is good is that I like the work I'm going to be doing and of course, the money is very exciting," he said.

On the other hand, Ranvir Singh, a graduate of the same batch at IIM-B, turned down a foreign offer in favour of an Indian one. National Kidney Foundation, Singapore, where he did his summer internship, wanted to take him on board. "But I decided to take up an offer by a consulting firm as being an analyst gives multi-functional and multi-industrial exposure," he explains.

Turning point

It is obvious that summer internships are becoming turning points for business school students. Increasingly, this eight-week period is turning fruitful for both students and corporates and is becoming a time when they assess one another to build future relationships. Though conversion of summer internships into firm job offers was happening even before the year 2000, it is only in the last three-four years that things have started hotting up. According to Y. L. R. Moorthi, Chairman, Placements, and Professor of Marketing, IIM-B: "It is difficult to recapitulate when organisations really started moving in this direction. We have always encouraged students to take internship seriously. Then the organisation takes its call rather than base the judgment on a one-day interview process. Many companies are veering towards this view now." According to statistics available at the institute, in 2002, 22 students accepted PPOs from 25 offers; in 2003, 11 accepted from 18 PPOs; in 2004, 12 accepted from 29 PPOs and in 2005, 14 accepted from 43 PPOs.

Ganesh Prabhu, Associate Professor, Corporate Strategy and Policy Area, IIM-B who was Chairman, Placements, during the period 2001-04, attributes the increasing conversion of internships to firm offers to a timing change in the summer placements season. Earlier, companies used to arrive on campus in the first week of October when the first year students had hardly completed three months in business school.

And the summer placements process itself was a long-drawn one, where early bird companies snapped up the best students. Obviously, companies that arrived late — for whatever reason — got the leftover talent. Therefore, there was no talent match between the companies and students. Students, also, were forced to take whatever came their way: "By October, students have not even started studying management subjects, they are still learning the basics of economics and statistics, thus not knowing their area of interest," he points out. Marketing companies have traditionally had very good summer internship processes in place and they used to land early and take up the best students. Thus, students with an interest in finance or HR would get these projects. "Therefore, we decided all companies must come on the same weekend like they do for final placements," says Prabhu.

Moreover, all IIMs coordinated and scheduled their summer placements on consecutive weekends. This enabled global companies to finalise their summer projects and choose their students — all in one visit. This definitely had an impact on final placements as students got companies of their choice and companies also got a better fit as far as students were concerned. Thus, the number of PPOs has increased over the years.

Another factor that may have contributed to the trend is the fact that all IIMs decided to do away with the expiry date on offer letters given after summer internships. Earlier, companies would pressurise students into accepting an offer within a week after it was made, thus barring them from going through campus placements.

And students who thought they would get better offers during the final placements did not accept the PPOs. Now, they can keep the PPO and still go through the grind of campus interviews and decide which one to take up. Prabhu says the summer placement process itself has undergone a lot of change. "

Now, even summers are planned and managed with the same level of seriousness as final placements. Students are selected after written tests, GD and several rounds interviews. The suitability is checked and the norms are very close to final placements," he points out.

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