The summer placement process of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta ended on November 15, securing summer internships for 353 students from a batch of 362. In the five-day long process spread across three slots, there were 125 companies that participated. 215 students were placed in Slot 0 itself.

The batch of 2010-12 has 68% students with prior work experience, compared to 63% last year. The average work experience of the batch is 20 months. The batch has a total of 91% engineers.

* The institute was asked to provide this information, but the placement committee maintained that it did not keep a record of the number of offers.

Finance

A $6 billion hedge fund visited campus. The institute claims that this is the second time that a hedge fund has visited an Indian b-school. JP Morgan has offered one student an internship at the Chief Investment Officers desk.

RBS, which was one of the companies of Slot 0, made the maximum number of offers (15). UBS made 12 offers. Other major recruiters included Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Bank of America, Merril Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JPMC, HSBC (Global), Citigroup and French investment bank BNP Paribas. First time recruiters included Macquarie Securities.

Investment banks Elara Capital and Equirus Capital, private equity firms Jacob Ballas Capital, M-cap fund advisers Clearwater Capital and Walden International also hired from the campus on the first day. Houlihan Smith, a specialized investment bank, recruited exclusively from IIM Calcutta, said the institute.

Consulting

20% of the batch has been placed in consulting firms. McKinsey & Co, Bain & Co and AT Kearney were among the top recruiters. Accenture was the highest recruiter (8 offers), with Feedback Ventures, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Frost & Sullivan also hiring students for consulting profiles.

Marketing & General Management

28% of the batch has been placed in marketing firms and 8% in general management profiles. Regular FMCG recruiters — Hindustan Unilever, P&G;, Nokia, Diageo and ITC were back on campus. ITC made 8 offers becoming the largest FMCG recruiter followed by P&G; that made 6 offers. Other major FMCG recruiters who participated in the process are Coke, Pepsi, Airtel, Kraft, GSK and Marico. Tata Administrative Services (TAS), Aditya Birla Group, Mahindra & Mahindra and RPG group offered general management roles.

International Offers

Over 75 students will be interning in international locations, an increase of 20% over the last year. Internship locations offered include New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Dubai, Vietnam and South Africa.

Law firm L&S; hired students to work on strategy. This was the first time such a profile was offered at IIM Calcutta. CRY recruited for the social sector.

Slot-based process vs IIM Ahmedabad’s Cohort-based process

IIM Calcutta, though is in close contact with IIM Ahmedabad and watching how the Cohort-based placement system is working for the latter, continues with the slot-based placement system.

The placement committee chairperson of IIM Calcutta, professor Amit Dhiman told PaGaLGuY, “Both the systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Though we know how the Cohort-based system works, IIM Calcutta for now does not have plans of adopting it. We are reviewing our process, but for the upcoming final placement season we will continue with the regular process.”

Sharing some of the comments that recruiters have made to him, Prof Dhiman said, “Where the cohort-based process gives a lot of time to the students and recruiters to make their choice, it might also lead to job losses. In the long term, the companies might reduce the number of offers they give. Some recruiters have also shared their confusion about how the cohorts and clusters are formed.”

He adds, “I personally feel, the process become time-consuming and students stay distracted from their academic routine for a long time. The pressure on one hand in said to reduce on the students, but I feel, it might also add to the anxiety of the students, if they have to wait till the last cohort.”

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