XLRI Jamshedpur gets 100 top-level placement offers

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KOLKATA: XLRI Jamshedpur’s lateral placements have ended on a high note with about a 100 offers made in varied profiles like finance, consultancy, operations, marketing and human resources for senior-level management roles.

The highest package offered was Rs 22 lakh annually, while the average package was Rs 15 lakh a year.

The financial services domain was represented by Barclays, Lehman Brothers, Standard Chartered, JM Financial, Centrum, among many others who made offers for investment banking, treasury sales, trading, product structuring, wholesale banking, relationship management and M&A advisory.

Consulting firms too, thronged the campus, offering students the roles of senior level consultants. Ernst and Young, Hewitt, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mercer, KPMG, TSMG, Capgemini were the leaders in the pack.

The laterals process also saw a marked increase in the number of general management offers made by Indian business houses, including the Birla group, Hindujas, Essar, L&T and RPG. The Al Ghanim group offered international roles. The technology sector was represented by IBM, Cognizant, Infosys, HCL, Wipro, and the offers ranged from business development to global sales to project management. Infosys offered students fast track programs which would fetch packages of $1,00,000 a year into the job.

Professor Uday Damodaran, the chairperson of the placement committee said in a release, “The large number of high quality offers in niche areas reinforces the fact that XLRI is the preferred campus for recruitment by corporates.”

Excellence in Indian B-schools

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India currently has around 1,300 and more business schools (B-schools) approved by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) as the management education movement is nearing its fifth decade. Yet not a single school happens to be among the top 50 in any international rankings.

Of the many B-school rankings conducted in India every year, parameters stressed are infrastructure, education process, management development programmes, academic programmes, social responsibility, placement and industry interface. Even the best of the B-schools including IIMs, excelling in many of these parameters, today have a shortage of faculty and lack in research. Quality, distinctly, is something that the B-schools have to focus on in order to measure up to their peers in the west. Accreditation of B-schools is one way of ensuring quality. The accreditation principles are based on best practices in business education, maximising value addition.

These principles promote excellence in business education focusing on the value chain. Institutions must achieve and demonstrate an acceptable level of performance consistent with their mission, while satisfying defined standards. The processes used to strengthen curricula, develop faculty, improve instruction, and enhance intellectual activity determine the direction of improvement.

National Assessment & Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous body set up by government in 1994, is one of the two agencies providing accreditation. National Board of Accreditation (NBA) constituted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), is the other body extending accreditation to institutions. While the purpose of the two agencies is to ensure quality, their present framework focus more on the input side requiring the institutions to comply with the minimum requirements necessary for teaching-learning process.

The participation level for accreditation must increase. Internationally, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), founded in 1916, grants accreditation for undergraduate and graduate business administration and accounting programmes. As of July 2007, 551 member institutions hold AACSB business accreditation and 94 accreditation council members are outside of the US.

The Association of MBAs (AMBA) has formally been accrediting MBA programmes since the early 1980s and currently accredits the MBA portfolios of over 130 schools worldwide. Its accreditation has developed into the internationally recognised standard of quality and good practice. International Assembly for Collegiate Business Accreditation (IACBE) accredits degree programmes in business and business-related fields.

The IACBE bases its accrediting process on principles, rather than standards. European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), an international system of strategic audit and accreditation designed by Europeans (EFMD-The Management Development Network), uses the EQUAL (European Quality Link) model.

The design of the EQUAL model allows the EQUIS framework to cope with diversity and offer schools a powerful development tool. Indian B-schools should make serious efforts at meeting the accreditation norms. The institutions must develop and implement a strategic plan and it is expected that the strategic plan will include the outcomes assessment plan, reflecting on the learning objectives, strategies, action plans, etc. The business faculty should participate in the continuous review of the curricula and recommend changes and improvements as deemed appropriate.

Quality teaching should be supported by highly qualified faculty, capable of providing learning opportunities for students and who are active in professional and scholarly activities. Excellence in teaching is related to appropriate faculty workloads. The institution should encourage and reward appropriate professional development through research grants, sabbaticals,and so on.

The resources allocated to the institution, such as, IT labs and tools, library and hi-tech delivery tools should be sufficient to support all aspects of its activities. Internationalisation of business curriculum may come along with international experiences provided through the institution, other universities, or educational consortia; articulation agreements with institutions in other countries; or the promotion of student/faculty exchanges abroad.

As cultural, demographic, and technological shifts occur in society, the needs of business change. Individual business faculty members should be encouraged, supported, and rewarded for their creativity and for developing educational innovations related to course content and instruction. A few leading institutions in India and overseas campuses such as IMT Dubai have taken a lead in acquiring international accreditation for their programmes. Making accreditation integral to the system is essential, and not optional any more, to usher in world class excellence at Indian B-schools.

IIM-A once again: Sunday ET B-School survey

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They are factories producing business leaders of the future. And are going to play a big role in making India, the talent capital of the world. B-schools have always been a hot subject for business publications in the country, but it’s their perceptual value that makes them ‘hot’ amongst the hiring fraternity.

As 2007 draws to a close, Sunday ET commissioned global research major Synovate to identify some of the big B-schools to watch out for in 2008, on the perceptual benchmarks laid down by India Inc. The survey of the top CEO and HR heads had a story to tell. While some IIMs, ISB and the likes of FMS were bunched together as the top choices by the industry, it was interesting to note second rungs making a prominent mark amongst the top 20 B-schools.

And threaten the popularity of some B-schools that have traditionally ruled the chart. Savour this. Symbiosis, Pune and IMI Delhi outscored the likes of XLRI and IIM Lucknow and others like K J Somaiya and S P Jain Institute finding a stronger favour over IIM Kozikode and MDI Gurgaon. This clearly points to the fact that second line of management education is readying itself and will keep big brothers on their toes. However, Big Bs still rule. The IIM-A bags the top slot followed by IIM-B among the top B-schools in the country. And which management institute has the best faculty and is constantly up-grading? It’s IIM-A once again!

XAT aspirants nearing 100,000

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In a couple of days, around 90,000 management aspirants, will be taking the Xaviers Admission Test (XAT).

This is a 20 per cent increase in the number of candidates taking XAT from last year, when the figure stood at 75,000.

The number of colleges accepting XAT scores has also doubled from 23 in 2004 to 46 this year.

“The Indian industry today has a capacity to absorb management graduates like never before. Moreover, even the top B-schools have increased their batch sizes to meet the growing demand,” KK Raman, executive director, KPMG said.

“A recent trend has emerged where good B-schools are accepting Common Admission Test as well as XAT scores. So deserving candidates who could not perform well in CAT for any reason, see XAT as an opportunity to get into a good business school (B-school,” he adds.

TAPMI sets record in placements of graduates

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AVERAGE SALARY OFFERED IS Rs 7.38 lakhs

Manipal: Almost all the students of T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal, were ‘placed’ within a few hours of commencement of the process of the Campus Placement for the batch of 2008, held on Thursday.

According to a press release, the TAPMI adopted a dual offer system with an end of the day acceptance in order to allow students to have their choice of signing up for the most preferred organisations.

While 74 companies confirmed their willingness to recruit, 61 companies participated on the campus placement process on Day One, that is, December 20.

They together made a total of 184 offers (including 3 Overseas) to 125 students.
Students exercised their choice and accepted offers in 50 companies representing diverse sectors such as Financial Services including Banking, Equity Research and Wealth Management, IT & ITES, Consulting, Telecommunication, FMCG, Manufacturing, Health Care, Entertainment and Infrastructure.

Total of 12 students had received pre-placement offers for their outstanding performance during their summer internship of which three accepted. The average salary offered this year is Rs 7.38 lakhs (which is to go up with revised salary structure from a few companies) and the highest salary offered is Rs 18 lakhs (Rs 9.25 in Placement 2007), the release added. Companies that visited TAPMI campus and recruited for the first time included Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, SEBI, ICRA, Adventity, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank, CapGemini, D E Shaw, Big FM, GMR Group, Godrej & Boyce, JSW, Tata Capital, Reliance Capital, Pioneer Investment Corporation and Wockhardt Hospitals.