It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. While top-rated business schools have seen flagging placement interest, and the war for talent has been relatively muted leading to lower salary offers, second rung B-schools are having a good year.
Cost pressures have forced corporates to hire fresh B-school graduates instead of experienced professionals. Campus hires are replacing junior level lateral hires, so up to tier-II B-schools, placements have been buoyant, despite a slowing economy.
Mr Vipul Prakash, MD, Elixir Web Solutions, an HR consultancy, says his firm is sitting on demand from 27 clients for fresh recruitments. “So there is lot of hiring happening. In tier-II B-schools, salaries have gone up. In tier-III, however, the salaries are flat and variable percentage has gone down. In the last few years, telecom was hugely aggressive on employment. Now it is insurance and retail.”
Xavier's Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar, saw 100 per cent placement in the second week of January. Average placement salary offers for its business management programme also increased by 6 per cent over last year.
“This year the average annual compensation stood at Rs 11.42 lakh a year compared with Rs 10.76 lakh last year. The median salary stood at Rs 10.83 lakh a year,” said Mr Sworen Sahu, Placement Co-ordinator of XIMB.
Even relatively less favoured university departments are reporting a decent placement season. “This year, we got some new recruiters including Goldman and Sachs. As compared to last year, our average package has gone up by Rs 1 lakh to Rs 9 lakh (per annum) this year. Having said that, the number of companies have come down from 23 last year to only 17 this year. We are expecting 95 per cent placement by March end,” says Mr Chirag Agarwal, Placement Coordinator, Department of Financial Studies, University of Delhi.