The Hindu Business Line : Flavour of the season

WHILE the IIMs give 1,500-odd managers to corporate India (though many of them opt for foreign postings) every year, it's the next rung of B-schools that are actually strengthening the talent base in the country. And some of them concluded their placement process in December 2005 itself.

Companies started visiting The ICFAI Business School, Bangalore, as early as October 2005 and the placement process was completed in early February, says T. R. Venkatesh, Director, The ICFAI Business School. While about 70 per cent of the 270-strong batch was taken up by the IT, ITeS, consultancy and banking sectors, the rest was garnered by manufacturing, marketing and advertising firms, says S. Murali, Senior Professor and Chairman, Placements, The ICFAI Business School.

This year, 95 companies came calling to the ICFAI campus to net talent. IT companies that have picked their employees from the institute include names like Oracle, Wipro, 24x7, Cognizant, TCS, i-flex and Accenture. They hired finance, marketing and development professionals from here. Financial services companies, including banks, picked up 60 students. In fact, The ICFAI Business School this year decided to introduce an elective course in wealth management for students, which was very well received by recruiting banks. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, IDBI and UTI Bank have picked up students from among those who opted for this elective course, says Murali. HR consultants like Ma Foi and MeritTrac have also recruited a few students from The ICFAI Business School.

At the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME), Bangalore, the placement process kicked off in January this year. T.C. Alexander, Dean, XIME, says about 60 companies have already visited the campus and 95 of the 119 students in the graduating batch have received offer letters. "The first lot of companies landed here in January and the next lot in March and we expect some of them to come here after the IIM placements are over," he says.

Satyam, Infosys, Wipro, Honeywell, HTMT, Henkel, UB Group, Vysya Bank, Citi Financials and GE Money are some of the companies that have picked talent from XIME. Alexander says there were `plenty' of offers from IT companies and 45 students have opted for finance jobs. While 22 students have chosen for a `systems' career, 30-35 will get into marketing jobs. At the T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal (TAPMI), the entire placement exercise was concluded in record time. On December 26 last year, all the 126 students — who received 145 offers — were placed in `a matter of hours,' according to Raghunath Rudran, Chairman, Placements, TAPMI.

Among the large recruiters on campus were Infosys , Citigroup , ICICI , HDFC , CRISIL and Wipro . Some of the companies that visited the campus for the first time were Accenture, Godrej Boyce, HSBC and Cognizant Technologies.

The average salary at TAPMI this year is Rs 5.74 lakh, a jump of about 30 per cent over last year's average. It's the same kind of increase at other institutes too. At The ICFAI Business School, the average salary is Rs 4.6 lakh and at XIME, it's Rs 3.7 lakh. The highest salary too has gone up at all the institutes: At The ICFAI Business School, it stands at Rs 9 lakh, in XIME at Rs 7.8l akh and in TAPMI, at Rs 7.75 lakh. In all three schools, about 30 per cent of the students came with prior work experience. "While some companies prefer lateral hires, there are a few who ask for complete freshers, like in the banking industry," says Venkatesh of ICFAI . And like the IIMs, all the B-schools are now emphasising the importance of summer placements that have now become a prelude to the final placement process. "The project, the company brand and the stipend all have a role to play in the final placement," he says.

There's definitely a war for talent everywhere and B-schools are surely gearing up for it.

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