IIM-A`s 2008 batch bags 79 pre-placement offers

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The placement season has begun early at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

With five months still to go before the placement day, pre-placement offers have begun to pour in for the batch of 2008 at IIM-A. There have been a total of 79 offers so far with nine students being extended associate offers.

Also, in a new move, the institute is allowing exchange students from other countries to sit for placements.

Top consulting firms like McKinsey and Co, and Bain and Co along with others in the investment banking industry, such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, have extended fulltime offers to students who interned there.

Diane Gabriel, an exchange student at IIM-A, said, “As a French IIM-A-ESSEC dual-degree student, I intend to sit for placement at IIM-A because it offers great professional opportunities both in India and abroad. The companies that come to the campus are among the world’s best and the roles that they offer are as diverse and challenging as they come.”

Last year, 11 students decided to become entrepreneurs and not sit for placements. The trend is set to repeat this year.

Kunal Upadhyay, who heads the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A, said, “In recent times, the focus of students has risen above PPOs, job offers etc to start their own ventures.”

To encourage the trend, IIM-A is providing such students with the option of coming back to IIM-A for placements within two years after graduation.

B-schools expect over 150% rise in pre-placement offers

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IIM-Bangalore, which has received around 70 offers so far this year, leads the pack.

Indian B-schools are all charged up for the pre-placement season, with some expecting an increase of over 150 per cent in the pre-placement offers (PPOs) made to their students when compared with last year’s figure.

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore, for instance, has received around 21 PPOs so far as compared to a total of 22 last year.

The institute expects the offers to go up to 55 this year — an increase of around 162 per cent. IIM-Indore has, so far, got offers from FMCG majors, IT companies and banks. “We are expecting more than 25 offers from banks alone,” said an IIM-Indore placement executive.

The institute, however, is keeping its PPOs open till it begins its final placements in February. PPOs usually flow in from the month of September (after the first year students finish their summer internships at companies) and go on till December or January.

Most B-schools close their PPOs by the end of October (or by early November) as they want to give the students ample time to decide on which company to join.

At the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, two PPOs have flowed in so far but the institute expects the offers to cross 50 this year. Last year, the institute had 32 offers in total. It expects a jump of around 56 per cent in the PPOs made this year.

“This year, we are expecting the offers to go up because our batch profile is different. More than 50 per cent of our students have over a year’s experience,” said Nilanjan Chattopadhyay, placement chairperson at IMT Ghaziabad.

IIM-Bangalore, however, leads the pack in the number of PPOs any B-school has received so far. The institute is said to have got around 70 PPOs till now — an increase of around 16 per cent as compared to the total number 60 PPOs it notched last year.

However, the institute expects the number of PPOs to go up, as many companies are in the process of evaluating the candidates. The interns who have bagged the offers worked with various companies in different locations across the world — San Francisco, Australia, London, Texas, Singapore and Brussels.

Companies which have made offers are Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, HSBC, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Barclays Capital, Citigroup, HLL, P&G and Marico among others.

Eight companies have approached the Xavier’s Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIM-B), with PPOs so far. While the institute received around 30 pre-placement offers last year, its conservative estimate is over 30 offers this year.

Companies which have evinced interest so far in recruiting students from the campus include Tata Corporate HR, Dr Reddy’s, Vedanta and Future First.

The institute is expecting a lot of new companies on the campus this year. “The focus of 60 per cent of the students is on finance and banking,” said an XIM-B student.

IIM-Kozhikode (IIM-K) has bagged 17 national and one international pre-placement offers. It expects the offers to go up to 70 — an increase of over 35 per cent as compared to 52 (50 national and 2 international) it received last year.

Companies which have made offers include KPMG Dubai, Hindustan Unilever, Horizon Asset Management (for its new hedge fund), ITC, JP Morgan, Marico, and Cognizant among others.

A placement official at IIM-K said, “Recruitment scene at the institute will be as good as last year.”

While companies flocking to management schools in big numbers is not new, the institutes are attributing this increase in offers to the booming economy and an equally vibrant jobs market.

An IIM professor said, “Companies have always looked at PPOs as an effective placement option. Summer internships help companies ascertain students’ calibre. Also, students get to know the organisation’s work culture, which helps them in taking a decision.”

Fancy pre-placement offers for IIM-B graduates

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BANGALORE: Jobs chase them half way through the course. Most IIM-B Bangalore grads get excellent job offers midway.Presently, recruiting companies are going a step further to ensure they reserve their candidates in time by making pre-placement offers (PPOs) to several of these students after their first year itself.The trend is gaining favour across companies in different sectors. The Student Media Cell of IIM, Bangalore, is getting excellent pre-placement offers (PPOs) from various companies with whom they had done their summer internships at various locations across the world.

All major consultancy firms and investment banks, which together form the most coveted group of recruiters these days, have offered PPOs to IIM Bangalore students.Spokesperson of IIM-B Bangalore said that although PPO as a concept has been known for long but this year has seen a significant rise in the number of offers made to IIM-B students. All the consulting firms that recruit from IIM Bangalore in Slot Zero includes firms like McKinsey & Co., The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bain & Co., A T Kearney and Trilogy.

They have given PPOs to all of the summer interns they hired from the IIM-B campus last year. To the credit of IIM Bangalore, this remarkable feat is unparalleled. Rahul Jain, principal, BCG believes that the diversity among students of IIM-B is a major contributing factor to this.The quality and diversity of students are truly exceptional, he said. The students had worked with these companies in different locations like San Francisco, Australia, London, Texas, Singapore, Brussels and India.Investment banks too have made offers for final placements to a large number of interns from IIM-B.

Companies like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, HSBC, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Barclays Capital and Citigroup have all made final offers to their interns who worked across locations like London, New York and the Asia-Pacific.Companies are increasingly finding the PPO route to final selection more useful as they get to take a closer look at the candidates during the summer internship.

“The summer internship process at A T Kearney gives us an opportunity to evaluate interns rigorously and assess within the organization.We are very pleased with the summer interns from IIMB this year and have decided to extend Pre-Placement Offers to them,” said Vishal Kaushal, principal, A T Kearney.

AICTE cracks whip on defaulting B-schools

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Unapproved institutes, many of the country’s leading ones, will be closed, says the All India Council for Technical Education.

Seven months after the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) served notice to 273 institutes running technical programmes without the regulating body’s approval, a mere 32 institutes have sought the necessary approval.

Renowned technical education institutes like — Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; Kirloskar Institute of Advance Management, Karnataka; Federation of Hotel and Restaurants Association of India Institute of Hospitality Management (FHRAI), Noida; Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai; ICFAI Business School, Gurgaon and Chandigarh; Sikkim Manipal University, Bangalore and TASMAC Institute, Pune — still figure on the defaulters list.

In March this year, the AICTE had issued notices to these institutes asking them to comply by its norms to operate in the country. In June, the regulating body sent them final reminders and finally in July, decided to seek the state governments’ help in shutting them down. “We want to safeguard the students from falling prey to some fly-by-night operators. Many of these institutes run programmes ranging from masters in management, engineering, hospitality management and diploma in fashion technology. We receive numerous enquiries from anxious parents and students everyday and thus we have decided to clamp down on these institutes,” said an AICTE official.

Institutes which have got the AICTE approval include the Christ Educational Society, Bangalore; Bharat Institute of Aeronautical Engineering and Technology, Pune; Adroit Engineering Institute, Mumbai; NIIT, Bangalore; Academy of Pharmaceutical Management, Mumbai; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s PDN College of Communication and Management, Mumbai; Delhi Business School, Delhi; HR College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai and five technical colleges run by Mumbai Education Trust, Mumbai.

The AICTE says, it’s firm on its stand to approach the state government to shut these institutes down. “We will be talking to the state governments on this issue. The AICTE approval is a must and no institute can run a technical course without it. Institutes which have the state government’s approval to run the course will also have to take AICTE’s approval. However, some colleges affiliated to state universities could be exempted if they fulfill the necessary formalities asked by AICTE,” said an AICTE official.

Unapproved institutes are classified in two categories — those which run technical unapproved programmes in collaboration with foreign institutes and others which have not sought the AICTE’s approval at all for running their technical programmes.

For instance, Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management (KIAM) in Karnataka, run and governed by the Kirloskar Group of Companies, one of India’s largest industrial conglomerates, has got into a tie up with Kishore Biyani promoted Pantaloon Retail. But the institute apparently has not sought permission from AICTE for the same. It offers a post graduate diploma in management. Other management institutes which figure on the list are— Training and Advanced Studies in Management Communication (TASMAC institute), Pune; Mumbai-based Weigan and Leigh College and Welingkar Institute of Management Development.

Mumbai Education Trust’s (MET’s ) five institutes— MET Asian Management Development Centre; Institute of Distance Learning; Institute of Software Development and Research; Insitute of Mass Media and Institute of Medical Sciences— sought clearance from the AICTE earlier this month.

Says Sunil Karve, founder trustee and vice chairman - MET league of colleges, “Getting an approval from the AICTE has cleared a lot of unnecessary misunderstanding in the minds of our stakeholders. The AICTE wanted to know if the activities at MET were within the purview of the AICTE norms. They wanted to be sure that none of the activities were violating the norms.”

The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, has also applied for an AICTE approval. Said an Indian School of Business official, “We did receive a letter from the AICTE asking certain clarifications and our relationship with our partner schools— Kellogg Graduate School of Management and The Wharton School. We have furnished all the details to AICTE”.

B-schools show quality gaps despite upgrades: Survey

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The big B-school event of 2007 was not just the battle over autonomy for management institutions or the huge salary hikes for MBAs.
Rather, it was the significant improvement in the number of middle-rung business schools in the country.

This is one of the key findings of the 2007 annual B-school survey of the All India Management Association, published by Indian Management, a Business Standard publication.

An overview of the ratings shows that there are significant changes in many of the categories.
For instance, the number of institutes in the A category has come down from 37 last year to 23 this year. The biggest change, however, has been in the middle segment, where in the B+ category, while there were 40 institutes last year, the number has shot up to 61.

The ratings focus on five core parameters: intellectual capital, interface with industry, governance, admissions and placement, and infrastructure.

The survey expectedly brings out the huge gap in quality among schools in the various categories.

For example, if you take the intellectual capital parameter, the average super league school (the top-rung) has around 54 PhDs in their faculty. At the next level, the figure drops to 37. Then it crashes steadily all the way to C category schools with just three PhDs apiece.

Again, if you were to take the average number of titles published by the Super Leaguers, it is 26. The A-plus schools (below the super league) also did a respectable 25. But by the time you get to the C schools, it’s practically negligible.

There is also a vast difference in the average Indian salary paid to MBA graduates. While it is about Rs 10 lakh per annum for the super leaguers, it is just Rs 1.58 lakh a year for the schools in the C category.

The survey highlights some key challenges that B-schools face across the country. For one, research is clearly at a premium in most B-schools.

Second, the huge teaching loads inflicted on faculty particularly in the lower-rung schools highlight an acute shortage of teachers.

Third, particularly for those MBAs graduating from B and C category schools, employability and job-fit remain an issue.

However, despite these issues, B-schools continue to get a growing number of applicants every year.

Institutions are also revamping their courses and curricula to suit the changing needs of students and industry.

The top rung B-schools in particular are on a global drive with many of them setting up campuses overseas, establishing exchange programmes with international institutes, inducting summer trainees and students from overseas, and having companies from abroad coming to them for placements.

Of the roughly 1400 B-schools approved by the All India Council for Technical Education, 201 participated in the AIMA survey conducted by IMRB International.

Of these only 194 were rated as others did not qualify or sent in their questionairres late. The full listing and related stories appear in the September edition of Indian Management.