IIFT students land dream jobs

KOLKATA: Be it the highest salary offer or the number of top corporate houses making a beeline for its students, the Kolkata campus of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) has managed to throw in many surprises this placement season, despite the ongoing economic slump. The IIFT authorities said they were apprehensive about the way placements would go this year, but finally managed to place the entire batch.

IIFT, established by the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India, in 1963, is a leading research and training institute in international business subjects. In an era of increasing globalization, IIFT programmes are unique because of their emphasis on international dimensions of economy and business. Continuous research has been the backbone for updating the IIFT curriculum to reflect fast-changing global business dynamics.

There was a sizeable increase in the number of companies that visited the Salt Lake campus for the first time. Of the 72 companies that visited the campus, 38 were newcomers. However, only 62 could recruit from the campus as students benefited from a wide choice and were choosy in their acceptance of offers. "This was especially encouraging, as many of these companies are multinationals and have put recruitments unless absolutely strategic on hold for the moment," said a spokesperson. "Also the diversity of recruiters across the sectors offering a plethora of profiles was more than what we expected this year," he added.

Industry leaders like Arthur D'Little, ITC, Colgate Palmolive, Nomura Holdings, Coca Cola, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bharti Airtel, Glenmark, Titan, Bajaj Auto, Cargill, Tata Motors, Axis Bank, ICRA, Unicon Securities, Eli Lilly, Vodafone, Virgin mobile, Philips Godfrey, Essar Group, Tata Steel, Reckitt Benckiser, ICI Paints and Avalon Consulting visited the campus to recruit students for positions in marketing, corporate finance, treasury, international business, general management, consulting and so on.

Some of the new recruiters, such as Usha International, AP Moller Maersk, Fino Analytics, Darashaw, Mitsui & Co, Merck, CARE Ratings, Siemens and Bertling Global offered diverse profiles. Big players in IT, like Wipro, Cognizant Business Consulting, HCL, TCS and Infosys were present, too.

A premier investment bank offered the highest salary Rs 19 lakh this year. The average salary was close to Rs 10 lakh. Interestingly about 30% students could wrest jobs in the most coveted international business and trading profiles. There was a major presence of public sector undertakings like BHEL, STC, Bank of Baroda, SAIL, IDBI Bank, NMDC and MMTC, among others.

Munish Bhargava, the corporate and placements advisor at IIFT said, "The recruiters included companies from sectors like trading, logistics, pharma, microfinance, and PSUs. Students were willing to compromise on their pay structures for good roles of their choice. Hence, many of them chose to go into PSUs even if they had managed berths in multinationals."

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