The placement process at IIM Ahmedabad, which in boom time used to finish in 3 days, entered its sixth day today (March 2). The institute has put a complete media gag on the students. aWe will release a statement only after the placement process is completely over,a said student member of placement cell Vivek Jain.

However according to a source in the school, 200 to 210 of the total 250 odd students had received job offers on Day 5 and another 20-25 were expected to get placed on Day 6. aThe best scenario expected right now is that the remaining 10-15 students would be all placed on Day 7,a the source informed.

The gold-class finance jobs in investment banking and private equity sectors have practically dried up this year. Any i-banking jobs have largely been through pre-placement offers (PPOs) to students who interned with the firm in 2008 summer.

The most valued recruiters at IIM Ahmedabad until now have been Bain and Co, AT Kearney, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and others. Vacated by the recession-hit top investment banks and private equity firms, the premier ‘Day 0’ and ‘Day Half’ placement slots this year also saw recruitment by FMCG majors Hindustan Unilever and Procter and Gamble.

Top consult McKinsey & Co, which until last year recruited over 50 graduates from the top b-schools will offer jobs to barely 35 Indian MBAs this year. aWe’ve made three offers each in IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta, and another three between IIM Bangalore and IIM Lucknow besides about 20 PPOs in IIM A, B and C. We may recruit 3-4 more from SP Jain, XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Kozhikode and Jamnalal Bajaj Mumbai depending on quality of talent,a said a source in McKinsey.

Others such as Bain and Co and BCG too have recruited considerably lesser numbers from the IIMs.

An IIM Bangalore alumnus said, aA lot of junior MBAs laid off from the investment banking and finance sector last year managed to find jobs in top consulting majors by the end of 2008. In effect, they ate into the jobs that potentially would have been available to this year’s graduating MBA classes.a

Instead of the usual practice of IIMs dictating company presence on campus in strictly formed slots, both IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore are having to let companies recruit from campus as they come in (‘a rolling process’ in b-school speak) in later slots of the placement process.

IIM Bangalore is equally tight-lipped about the ongoing placements which started on February 28 and are in Slot 2 as of writing this report.

The institute too expects a long drawn out placement season spilling over to the next week. According to a source, the institute will not charge a participation fee to recruiting companies coming in from Slot 3 (a participation fee of about Rs 75,000-1.5 lakh is charged by IIMs to every company that wishes to hire students from their campuses. A separate recruitment fee is charged to the company for every student that joins the company).

aWe will release an update after the placement process is entirely over, which we’re expecting to be sometime next week,a said Mathew Abraham, IIMB’s student spokesperson.

IIM Calcutta on the other hand has split the placements process to two phases, citing final examinations as the reason. The only IIM to communicate with the media until now, it placed 151 students in phase 1 and another 56 through PPOs. Phase 2 is scheduled to begin today (March 2).

aA total of 49 companies have visited IIM-C in the four days of Phase I while 25 companies came for recruitment during lateral process,a said the institute’s press statement.

aAs many as 89 offers were made in Slot 0. These included 50 Slot 0 PPOs and 39 Slot 0 final placement offers. Companies making the highest number of Slot 0 offers (PPOs and finals) were McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Frost and Sullivan, Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley. Firms such as Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, ITC and Nokia too were among the highly preferred companies in Slot 0,a the statement said.

IIM Calcutta claimed that there was no fall in conpensation amounts in phase 1.

aAs with every other business school in the world, IIM Calcutta too faced an unprecedented challenge in placing its students this year. A noticeable change as compared to last time is the number of offers made (or accepted) per company. Many international firms affected by the downturn had reduced the number of offers made, while in quite a few instances, students rejected lucrative international offers to opt for more secure jobs in other firms in the same sector. The expectations this time were not high, after seeing the placements in other leading colleges across the country,a the statement said.

aThough not as glamorous as last year in terms of the number of offers, this year definitely has its high points in terms of the quality of jobs offered,a said the institute statement.

Elsewhere, next-in-line b-schools such as Delhi’s Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), b-schools under the Symbiosis banner, b-schools at the Indian Institutes of Technology have all moved to a rolling process of placements extended over 2-3 months under the pressure of the economic crisis. Last year, these schools had placed their entire batch over 2-4 days.

IIFT Delhi has placed about 110 students and is looking to place the remaining 40 over the next two months. Students at the institute are also contacting companies independently besides appearing for on-campus interviews arranged by the placement committees. According to a source at the institute, the average salary until now has gone down to around Rs 7.5 lakhs as opposed to last year’s Rs 10.1 lakh.

Prof Munish Bhargav, Placement Advisor at IIFT, is expecting State Trading Corporations and government agencies to come for recruitment as well.

B-schools with smaller batch sizes are probably having it the easiest, relatively speaking. IIT Bombay’s Shailesh J Mehta School of Management (SJMSoM) has according to sources already placed about 60 of its 72 students and expects 100 pc placements in another 2-3 weeks.

(With inputs from Madhav Kumar)