(Photo courtesy: David Boyle)

Just because Mumbai is India’s financial capital, it does not mean jobs are easy to come. In fact, it has been as sluggish as schools in other areas last couple of years. To allay the problem (to a small extent), b-schools in Mumbai and recruiters have started pooling in campus placements. This means that students from different b-schools meet the recruiter together at a common location, either at the office of the recruiter or a host b-school.

This saves time, for both the recruiters and students and recruiters believe they have a better lot to pick from. While this trend was first noticed post 2008, it has steadily been growing and becoming a default option for those left unplaced post the placement season, and/or for schools not too high in the rankings. A general probe indicated that about 20% of the students of many schools in the 2011-13 batch were placed in this fashion, the percentage being as high as 30% in some schools. A former placement committee member (from the 2011-2013 batch) at Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education (SIMSREE), confirmed that around 30% of his batch was placed through this mode.

At KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research (SIMSR), it was about 20% while at Prin L N Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (WeSchool), 17 students were placed through the pool method.

According to Dr Uday Salunkhe, group director-WeSchool, “Corporates have an agenda of identifying and selecting the best talent suited to their organisational needs. When they are in search of that specific job profile or student profile, pooled placements offer a solution that not only helps them in making the right choices, it is quicker and costs less.”

But not all b-schools think this is the best method of recruitment. A student connected to placements at SIMSR says: “Pool placements typically happen around March (after the peak placement season) to recruit the bottom pool of the candidates. We would ideally want companies to come to campus and see our students as the brand of the college stands out that way. Companies coming through this way also pay a lot lesser than the regular on-campus placement drives.”

Some of the companies that opted for pool placements included Accenture, Mahindra and Mahindra, Novartis, Abbot India, Nomura, TCS, among others.

We spoke to most of these recruiters but none wanted to be identified publicly. What we got from them is that pool placements are done if the requirement is huge. “We called about 250 students from different schools and offered jobs to 40 of them for our operations division. This typically works when companies are not hiring in a planned fashion. Also, core finance and sales roles are not offered this way, only the lesser roles such as operations are,” said one of the recruiters.

While b-schools say that companies pay lesser, recruiters say that pool placements enable companies to meet a larger number of people and close positions quickly. “This also comes into effect during unplanned recruitments where you are in a sudden need of people,” explained a recruiter.

Another recruiter who hired 50 people this year using this mode disagrees. He says: “This method enables us to devise our own programs and process to fit the needs of the roles that we are offering. In fact, I believe competition is a lot higher as the pool is a lot wider. It is quite an intensive experience for both for us and the students as opposed to visiting an individual school where the time to meet them is a lot lesser. It is also not entirely true that the compensation packages and roles on offer are at the lower end of the spectrum. We go to top b-schools in other parts of the country and also recruit through the pool method.”

This trend is likely to continue its way up north in the coming years, say both, schools and recruiters. Already the numbers in pool placements have increased over the last couple of years, the overall dull economic condition could just make sure they increase further.