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Sankar Radhakrishnan

With competition increasing, companies are looking at different strategies to grab the best of the available managerial talent. And opting to make job offers to summer interns from B-schools is one such strategy that is getting popular.

"As the competition becomes hotter, organisations try to `beat' the queue in a variety of ways," says Ganesh Chella, CEO, Totus Consulting. While the `day zero' approach at Bschools was one such strategy, making preplacement offers to summer interns is another approach that has found favour with many in corporate India. "At the end of the day you need some criteria for recruitment decision - summer internship, academic performance, career fairs and so on. Summer internship looks like the most credible source," Chella adds. For many companies, the fact that an intern knows the organisation and vice-versa drives the decision to make pre-placement job offers to summer interns. This model suits companies very well, as the transition period for the new employee is likely to be a lot smoother and easier in the case of a summer intern than another new employee, says Hemalatha Rajan, Director, HR and Finance, Ma Foi Management Consultants.

Organisations that are not able to compete on B-school campuses during the placement season "use the summer trainee route to develop a sense of stickiness and demonstrate who they are and what the atmosphere is like," explains Chella. This strategy can backfire - if the summer internship is not handled well, there is very little chance of the intern accepting a pre-placement offer, he cautions. Chella believes the practice of such offers to summer interns is more common with the top 20 business schools. However, Ma Foi's Rajan says students of "Tier 2 and 3" institutes are also keen to accept these offers as it gives them a sense of confidence and security. The trend of companies making offers to summer interns "is bound to continue, rather increase, in the next couple of years, provided there isn't a major market downturn."

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