This season record pay's on offer for non-IIM graduates too

From The Economic Times

KOLKATA: It’s not just the IIMs who are expected to hog the limelight during this year’s student placements. The country’s second-tier B-schools, who started the placement process a few days ahead of the IIMs, have already begun setting pay package records.

Entry-level salaries at leading campuses like XLRI, IMT Ghaziabad, TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar (XIMB), Jamnalal Bajaj, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), International Management Institute (IMI) and Welingkar, have gone up by 12-20 %, including a significant jump in both the lowest and the 10 lakh-plus pay packets.

The institutes are also seeing IIM regulars — I-banks, consultancy firms and top MNCs — visit them for the first time this year. All in all, the campuses claim 2011 has been one of their best placement season ever.

“After a lull in 2009 and 2010, placements this year have seen a complete rebound to the pre-recession days,” says IMT Ghaziabad head (corporate relation) Prakash Pathak. “In fact, they are even better.” IMT was visited, for the first time, by recruiters like Goldman Sachs and P&G.

Average salaries, too, have shot up by 12%, to 9.3 lakh. At Mumbai’s Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), there has been a substantial rise in the number of global consulting firms visiting this year, with McKinsey, Citibank, and Nomura being the major recruiters.

HUL, ITC and P&G also visited the campus. At XLRI Jamshedpur, Swiss pharma biggie Novartis AG topped its last year’s highest package of $1,10,000 to $1,20,000 this year, for the role of HR leadership development at its global headquarters.

Around 15 new recruiters thronged XLRI this year, with average salaries shooting up from 14.2 lakh in 2010 to 15.8 lakh this year. XIMB saw almost 30 new recruiters coming in this year. “The economy is booming, and that translates into more offers and higher salary offers,” says Diwakar Kaushik, secretary, external linkages, at XLRI.

A total of 109 companies made 317 offers to the 240-strong batch at XLRI. Experts say a rebound by IT and ITeS firms, the bullish growth of FMCG companies and the strong performance of banks and financial institutions have rubbed off on placements.

“India Inc is back on its feet. Sectors like IT, ITeS and finance are getting a lot of international business, which is creating opportunities for students,” said Welingkar Institute of Management director Uday Salunke.

Some of the top recruiters confirmed that this year, they took a fresh look at their placement plans to widen their reach beyond the IIMs — but stuck to offering IIM-type salaries. Deloitte India rejigged its campus positioning this year to include other B-schools.

“We are offering a 10-15 % higher salary this year. Everyone is hiring in larger numbers, and recruitment frenzy has touched the pre-slowdown levels,” says Deloitte India’s HR head Dhananjay Bansod. Aditya Birla and RPG Groups have reviewed their campus recruitment plans.

“The idea is to recruit more from all the campuses and not just top ones,” says RPG Group president (corporate HR) VC Agarwal. However, HR heads are confident that changes in campus recruitment strategy by some of the companies will not impact IIM placements.

In fact, the IIMs are expected to make bigger placement records this year, including more number of the 1 crore-plus packages. Madhvi Lall, regional head of HR (India and South Asia) at Standard Chartered said they plan to hire 38 graduates from the premier campuses this year, up from last year’s 26. “We usually target the top 10 B-schools, which includes some of the IIMs as well as institutes like XLRI and FMS. Typically, we look at picking up at least 2-3 students from each campus,” she said.