IIFT 100% Placements

The Delhi-based Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) this year has seen its highest international salary package, till date, of $150,000 per annum, besides recording the highest average salary of Rs 11.54 lakh.

The final placements season that began in December last year saw 62 companies making offers to 164 students.

“This time around, the placements took place in three phases — international companies, lateral placements and final placements that ended in the first week of March. We spread this out as we did not want the recruiters to be under pressure,” said Munish Bhargava, corporate and placement advisor, IIFT.

About 30 per cent of the batch of 164 students, had pre-placement offers from firms like Cognizant Business Consulting, Mahindra & Mahindra, Johnson & Johnson Medical Systems, Tata Steel, Reckitt Benckiser, among others. Almost 10 per cent of the batch got placed overseas with Olam International offering the highest salary of $150,000. Other international recruiters included Triton Group, Sudima International, Punj Lloyd and Wilson International.

The highest domestic salary was Rs 13.08 lakh, while the average salary increased by 53 per cent over the last year at Rs 11.54 lakh per annum. Moreover, real estate companies along with energy and infrastructure firms were the new ones who visited the campus. The first timers included Amazan Agro, Daimler India, ONGC, Johnson & Johnson Medical Systems, Religare, Tata International, Jaypee Capital, ICICI Securities, Cairn Energy, SBI Capital, Gati, GE Corporation, MARG Group, Interglobe and Vistasoft.

“This year’s highest salary crossed the pre-slowdown levels. Last year, 30 per cent of the students opted for public sector jobs despite getting higher offers from private companies as the sentiment was to have a stable job,” added Bhargava. However, the institute still follows the one student-one offer policy as part of which a student can’t sit for another company’s exam if he already has one offer.

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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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Salaries drop at IIFT

The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade(IIFT),one of the premier B-schools in the country, has seen a 30 to 40 per cent drop in average packages offered at its lateral placements that concluded about a fortnight ago, and expects a similar trend in the upcoming fresher placements in January, owing to the downturn.

Around 50 students appeared for the lateral placements this year out of a total strength of 180 across the two IIFT campuses in Delhi and Kolkata and the institute has tasted 70 per cent success including pre-placement offers. "While the average package for lateral placements in the last academic session ranged between Rs12- 15 lakh per annum(pa), this year the average package offered is down to Rs 6 to 8 lakh pa. This could further go down during the fresher placements in January.", admitted K Rangarajan,head of IIFT Kolkata campus and Centre of MSME Studies at the institute. "As businesses try to focus on reducing overhead costs including expenditure on human resources, the package sizes offered have gone down.", he added. Sources in IIFT claimed that corporates are also trying to make the most of the current situation to avail cheaper manpower. Some students, it is learnt, have turned down offers.

"Around 40 to 45 per cent of the visiting companies are from the manufacturing sector this time.This is significantly more compared to other years when the balance was steeply in favour of service sector firms that comprised nearly 80 per cent of the portfolio.", Ranagarajan informed.

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IIFT ties up with global B-Schools

KOLKATA: In an effort to maintain its pre-eminence as one of the leading B-Schools in the country, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) is set to embrace new global partners to offer new courses in the state-of-the-art education on business management, international trade and marketing.

The institute, which has been awarded the deemed university status, is in talks with two global B-Schools now.

“Discussion is on with a German institute for a partnership in offering a new MBA course for aspiring business consultants. The purpose behind this is to have a faculty exchange programme and secure the opportunity for students to go to that German institute for completing part of the course curriculum under the programme,” said IIFT director KT Chacko.

IIFT is also eyeing a partnership with a London-based royal institute to explore the opportunity of offering a specialised course in logistics and supply chain management. Without divulging the name of the royal institute, Mr Chacko said the deal in this regard may be struck by early next month.

In step with its strategy to help create a pool of skilled workforce for different industries, IIFT is soon going to introduce an exclusive PG diploma course exclusively for the executives of Larsen & Toubro.

IIFT, as a nodal institute for offering training and education programmes on bilateral and multilateral trade issues in developing countries, has been invited by the governments of Namibia and Rwanda to launch those programmes in those states, in collaboration with local Bschools . “Two such programmes are planned to be launched in those African countries in the first week of December and another one in Cambodia in January next year,” said Mr Chacko.

These programmes are being facilitated by multilateral trading fora/funding agencies, including WTO, UNCTAD and Swiss International Development Organisation.

Earlier in the year, IIFT, under the regional resource development programme, had conducted two programmes on management development for SMEs at Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and at Kuo-Ming in China , in collaboration with the local institutes.

Right now, the institute offers courses on 35 streams within the broad spectrum in business and international trade management.

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Life beyond IIMs

Three lakh students will be making the beeline to take the CAT exam this year. But with less than one out of 300 aspirants making it to the much sought after IIMs, here's a list that will lighten the load off your shoulders. There is a life beyond the IIMs.

Xavier Labour Relation Institute School Of Management

Top of that pile is Xavier Labour Relation Institute School Of Management the institute located in the industrial town of Jamshedpur. It's setting high standards with a separate entrance conducted in the first week of January.
It's an opportunity in wings for those who don't make the coveted CAT list, for some though it was a first choice.

Faculty of Management Studies

The Faculty of Management Studies in the Capital may not be such a bad bet. It's number two on the list after XLRI. Apart from full time MBA, it's known for it's part time MBA programme as well.
As far as specialsations go the best of marketing and finance are the on offer.

Indian School of Business

In Hyderabad, the youngest of the all B schools is Indian School of Business. It's barely 10-years-old but is rising in ranks globally and on the list. A globally accepted GMAT exam along with comprehensive interviews and Group Discussion are prerequisites. But along with that the excecutive MBA requires a two years of work experience.

SP Jain Institute of Management and Research

Also in line is SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. For those with work experience both CAT and XAT scores work for its diploma.

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi closes the list of top five B schools in the country.

With percentiles above 95 giving you a fair chance of making it to leading B-schools, all's not lost if you haven't made it to the IIMs.

There are 99 other B-schools that accept CAT scores throwing open another gateway to your management dreams.

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IIFT Entrance Exam on 23rd November 2008

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi has announced dates for its entrance exam for MBA at Delhi and Kolkata campuses.The exam will be held on 23rd November, 2008. GMAT scores declared after January 1, 2007 also acceptable.

IIFT entrance exam will be conducted in 20 cities: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam.

The IIFT exam is based on multiple choice objective questions. The paper will be 2 hours with different sections including English Comprehension, General Knowledge & Awareness, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Analysis.

The students will be selected on the basis of their performance in Written Test, Group Discussion, Interview and Essay Writing.

Placement Highlights from Top B-schools

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FMS, Delhi University

Paris-based Calyon Bank made the highest domestic offer of INR 16.0 Lakhs per annum.
The highest number of offers was made by Cognizant Technologies with 15 offers. With 10 offers each, IBM, Standard Chartered Bank & ICICI Bank were a close second.

Nearly 48% of the batch opted for a career in Finance. On an average, the highest numbers of offers were made by Banks, with an astounding 62 offers being made IN ALL.

MBA (Management of Services), the 2-year full-time programme of FMS, saw its second batch getting placed, recording an average salary of INR 10.55 Lakhs per annum as opposed to last year’s INR 7.5 Lakhs p.a. The first international offers for the MBA (MS) Batch were made by Jumbo Electronics, Dubai, for an annual salary of AED 220,000 per annum.

A strong 78% of the batch of 2007 converted the option of “Dream Company” - thereby getting an offer from the company they aspired and dreamt of. Compared to other B-schools, this highlights the kind of choice that FMS offers to every student.

MDI Gurgaon

Highlight of placements at MDI Gurgaon was that offers poured in from students’ “dream companies” and that too in their preferred profiles.

160 students received 215 offers in all, making it 1.34 offers per student.
Top-notch international recruiters like Macquarie Bank and Emerio visited MDI campus for the first time.

XLRI Jamshedpur
The Campus Recruitment Process at XLRI ended with an epoch-making 50% rise in average salary, higher than any B-school in India.
Consulting and Finance firms were the cynosure of this paradigm-shifting placement scene at XLRI, making 24% & 30% of the offers respectively.

Hewitt was the top recruiter in consulting with 18 offers, followed by Accenture Business Consulting with 8 offers. Goldman Sachs was the largest recruiter in finance with 9 offers.

NITIE, Mumbai
More than 10% of the PGDIM batch at NITIE joined the millionaire club.
ICICI Bank (20), Cognizant Technology Solutions (20), ICICI Prudential (17), Kotak Mahindra (16), IBM (11) were among the top recruiters.
The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sector ranked among students’ top preferences with 35% accepted offers across companies in this sector.

IMT, Ghaziabad
Kotak Mahindra became largest recruiter at IMT Ghaziabad, handed out 31 offers, followed by Infosys, Cognizant Technology Solutions, ICICI Prudential, Bharti and Trident.

The placement process saw first-time recruiters including, eClerx, Jumbo International, Covansys, Dell and Accenture visiting the campus.
Along with the flagship PGDBM program, the newer programs in Human Resource Management (MHRM) and International Business (MIB) also saw substantial hike, both in the average compensation package and in terms of number of offers.

SPJIMR, Mumbai
Placements 2007 Creates 85 Millionaires at SPJIMR, Mumbai.
Companies resorted to the phone-a-friend option, calling up their head-offices and carving out special profiles other than those usually on offer.

Participants had 4 offers to consider on an average, with the choice set hitting 10 in some cases.
This year’s placement process saw more than 160 lateral offers generated for 65 candidates.

The highest international offer at SPJIMR was of 43,000 pounds by ICICI Bank for a treasury position in UK.

TISS, Mumbai
Companies like Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, Asian Paints & Wipro made Pre-Placement Offers to TISS students.

The institute maintained its enduring relationship with corporate bigwigs like ITC, IBM, HLL, etc., and began new innings with top profile and global companies like HSBC, Dell, Nokia, PwC, etc.

JBIMS, Mumbai
One in every two students, from the batch of 2007 at JBIMS gets offers to become a millionaire.
The institute had its highest number of international and lateral offers. Lateral offers were made to 20% of the batch, while 15% of the batch bagged international offers. Major recruiters for overseas placements were Olam International, First Gulf Bank, Sharaf Group, Man Financial and Jumbo Electronics.

IIFT, Delhi
20% of the batch receives Pre-Placement Offers at IIFT, Delhi.
Olam International and Backes & Strauss made international offers, apart from offers from Australian Wheat Board for their Trading operations.

The average package offered this year was INR 9.3 Lakhs with highest international package of USD 100,000 (offered by Olam International) and highest domestic package of INR 19.2 Lakhs (offered by Lehman Brothers).
The other higher paying offers were from Citigroup, Backes & Strauss, Standard Chartered, DTZ, etc.