Twelve days and four clusters later, the biggest batch of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A) ended its Summer Placement process on Friday. There were 378 students pursuing their first year of Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) who were placed during this process. There were 102 recruiters who came on campus this year.
After conducting their Final Placement through the new Cohort system in February-March 2010, IIM-A introduced the same process in the summer placement process also from this year onwards. The institute is very upbeat about the process and both the Placement Committee chairperson, profess Saral Mukherjee and the student members strongly believe in the success of the process.
Finance internships were the most popular among the students with 39 per cent of the batch opting for roles in finance. Last year, 44 per cent of the batch that had opted for finance roles. Royal Bank of Scotland was the recruiter with highest offers, making 22 offers on Cluster 1. Standard Chartered, Nomura and Morgan Stanley made thirteen, nine and eight offers respectively for investment banking and markets roles.
The other sector that regained popularity after seeing a major dip last year was consulting. 20 per cent of the batch opted for consulting jobs when only 11 per cent of the batch had opted for consulting last year during summers. Consulting majors, Accenture and Ernst & Young made 10 offers each, while McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group made 6 offers each.
| Total batch size | 378 |
| Opt outs | 0 |
| Total number of students who appeared for placements | 378 |
| Number of companies that recruited | 102 |
| Total number of offers | Not disclosed |
| Avg offers per student | Not calculable |
International recruiters in Finance – Goldman Sachs, Barclays, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Citi Group, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rothschild, UBS and American Express
Domestic recruiters in Finance – Religare, Edelweiss, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank.
Regular recruiters in General Management – Tata Administrative Services, HUL, P&G;, Cadbury Kraft, Aditya Birla Group, Diageo, Mahindra & Mahindra, Nokia and Coke.
First time recruiters – investment management firm T Rowe Price, niche consulting firm Hay Group and Reliance Industries
New Domains – social gaming (Playdom), advertising (Ogilvy & Mather), credit rating (Onicra) and rural finance (IFMR)
Other prominent recruiters – Cognizant, Ogilvy & Mather, Marico, Feedback Ventures, Nestle, Britannia, Heinz, AstraZeneca, Honeywell, Glaxo Smith Kline, J&J; Consumer and J&J; Medical.
Cohort-based recruitment process
The new cohort-based system is a process of recruitment where companies from the same domain and offering the same kind of roles are grouped together. Three to four such groups, called the Cohort, are invited on campus together and the interviews are conducted on campus over a few days. It allowed companies to interact with the students for a longer period of time and the students to interview with the companies of their choice. The breaks between clusters also allowed students to relax and prepare for the next round of interviews.
Cluster 1 – international investment banks, global strategy consulting and private equity, venture capitalist and investment management firms
Cluster 2 – Indian investment banking, global banking and financial services, general management, international marketing global brand and Indian private equity and venture capital
Cluster 3 media, FMCG, telcom, pharma, banking and consulting, automobile, IT, apparel and advertising
Cluster 4 Start-ups from niche’ consulting, financial services and general management
Other High Light There are almost 8 students who chose off-beat internships over corporate offers. This includes four students who have chosen to work under Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on the PURA project. Another student with an interest in governance and public policy formulation would be interning under Mr Prem Das Rai, Member of Parliament from Sikkim. There are few others who have chosen to intern with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.