The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad completed its final placement process earlier this week, securing jobs for as many as 283 students from the class of 2010. “A total of 110 firms participated in the laterals and final placement process, excluding firms that only extended Pre Placement Offers (PPOs),” said the IIM Ahmedabad press release on the placements. With 13 offers each, ICICI Bank and Yes bank were the largest recruiters this year.
“A big push this time came from the laterals placement process, for which 53% of the batch was eligible. Firms like Deloitte Consulting, A&M;, Yes Bank, TSMG, Cognizant, Aditya Birla Group, Amazon and Philips were some of the major recruiters during the process. More than 40 firms participated in the laterals process and extended more than 100 offers, an increase of 4 times over last year,” added the press release. Based on the data provided by the institute, 89 students secured jobs through the lateral channel or received a pre-placement offer. Five people opted to start their own ventures, while four opted out of the process, claims the institute. Three alumni from previous batches participated in the placements after having availed of the placement holiday.
The average salary for jobs offered in India was Rs 14.94 lakhs, while that for foreign offers was US$ 110,750. To give you a sense of what that means, earning US$ 110,750 in the USA is equivalent to earning about Rs 18.1 lakh in India (using the principles of The Economist’s Big Mac index and January 2010 prices). All salary figures used for calculations are the Cost-to-company figures and include averages of the variable bonus components, says the placement report disclaimer. More on this at the end of this story.
Having done away with the traditional slot-based process of placements, the institute this year experimented with a controlled format of the rolling-process of placements (which the institute calls the cluster/cohort-based placement process) that stretched over almost a month, compared with the previous system that aimed to wrap up the process within 3-4 days. Companies were classified into cohorts based on roles they were offering, and groups of cohorts were invited to recruit as a cluster every weekend starting February 2010. According to the institute’s final placement report, this is how companies offered jobs in each cluster:
| Cluster | Type of companies | Offers made | Offers accepted |
| 1 | Global Strategy Consulting firms, Global Niche Consulting firms,
Global Investment Banks and Global Private Equity firms |
42 | 35 |
| 2 | Indian investment banks, corporate leadership programs,
global FMCG operations |
60 | 52 |
| 3 |
Indian banking services, financial advisory services, credit rating agencies, Sales and marketing roles |
78 | 65 |
| 4 |
Not clear, but seems like an abstract collection of unclassified companies such as Yes Bank, ISPAT, Cognizant, etc. |
65 | 42 |
Salient companies and their offers in Cluster 1: Mckinsey & Co (8 acceptances including pre-placement offers), The Boston Consulting Group (8 acceptances including pre-placement offers), Monitor Group (5 acceptances), Bain and Company, Booz and Company, AT Kearney and Oliver Wyman.
“This year marked the return of the Investment Banks for the Final Recruitment Process. As compared to 2009 that saw almost no presence of Investment Banks for final placements, this year saw Investment Banks extending offers both through PPOs and final placements. While Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup were among the major recruiters to extend offers through the PPO route, we saw JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, HSBC and Nomura participate in the finals process,” said the placement report.
Goldman Sachs offered multiple roles in London while banks like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank offered roles across Asia-Pacific. Cybage and Syntel Inc. made offers for their US operations. P&G;, with 4 acceptances, continued with its trend of extending a majority of its offers for Singapore operations.
Based on the institute’s data, here are a few companies and the number offers they made:
| Company | Offers |
| ICICI Bank | 13 |
| Yes Bank | 13 |
| Deloitte | 10 |
| Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co, ISPAT | 8 each |
| Tata Administrative Services, Feedback Ventures | 6 each |
| Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, P&G; | 4 each |
Across sectors, the proportion of offers was like so:
| Sector | % of offers |
| Consulting | 29 |
| Finance | 27 |
| Marketing | 15 |
| Systems and IT | 15 |
| General Management | 13 |
| Started own ventures | 1 |