Defying the slowdown in the economy, top B-school XLRI Jamshedpur placed its largest ever batch of 303 students in less than four days for their mandatory summer internships. The institute’s first-year students received 336 offers in total. This is significantly higher than the 282 offers the institute had received for its batch of 240 students under the summer placement process in 2012.

The highest internship stipend offered was Rs 3 lakh.

The summer internship programme is aimed at bridging the gap between real-life business practices and academic institutions. It helps sensitise students to the nuances of a workplace by assigning them time-bound projects in a company. These internship projects are important as most firms offer students full-time positions based on the evaluation of their work during the two month internship, called a pre-placement offer (PPO).

Focus on finance

Nearly 105 companies participated in the internship process this year, compared to just about 73 companies in 2012. The top five recruiters in terms of numbers were Vodafone, Microsoft, ITC, TAS and Standard Chartered Bank, said a press statement issued by XLRI.

While human resources and marketing continued to attract a large number of offers; finance was a big draw this year with nearly one-third of the batch of 184 Business Management students receiving offers from the finance domain.

In finance, the institute witnessed participation from some hedge funds and venture capital companies for the first time. “While private equity firm Carlyle Group continued to recruit summer interns exclusively from XLRI, World Bank, a European hedge fund and a Singapore-based venture capital firm recruited summer interns (from here) for the first time,” the release said.

Goldman Sachs was the largest finance recruiter, followed by Standard Chartered Bank. Other recruiters included BNP Paribas, Citibank, American Express, DBS, HSBC Bank, Rabobank, Nomura, Altisource, Federal Bank and Riverbridge Investment Bank. L’Oreal and Novartis also recruited for their corporate finance roles.

“The FMCG sector saw participation from companies such as Unilever, Procter and Gamble, ITC, Reckitt Benckiser, Kraft Cadbury, Asian Paints, GSK-CH, Coca Cola, L’Oreal , Colgate Palmolive, Dabur, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Marico, Perfetti, Mars and Airtel.

Nearly 40 per cent of the Business Management students were offered roles in sales and marketing and HR functions by these companies.

Diverse Sectors

Apart from finance and FMCG, the institute witnessed participation from companies in the healthcare, e-commerce and consulting domains.

The healthcare sector witnessed participation from majors such asNovartis, Roche, Medtronic, Becton Dickinson, Boston Scientific, Dr Reddy’s, GSK Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma and Apollo Hospitals.

This apart, the institute saw offers flowing in from companies such as TAS, Aditya Birla Group, Reliance Industries and Philips among others for general management function.

The consulting domain saw participation from consulting majors such as The Boston Consulting Group, Accenture Management Consulting, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Cognizant Business Consulting, Deloitte, Capgemini Consulting, Wipro Consulting, and IBM Consulting.

Technology and e-commerce were other areas which were well-represented by participation from companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, and CISCO for roles in program management and HR.

There was also a rise in the number of companies offering operations and a supply chain role this year. “While ITC and GSK continued to recruit students for their supply chain role, Kellogg’s also opened its supply chain role at XLRI. Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Becton Dickinson and Apollo Hospitals also offered roles in the operations domain,” the release said. This apart, a Dubai-based multinational also offered international operations role to the students.

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