Manisha Kaushik (name changed), a student at a third rung Delhi-based business school, is preparing for her summer placements. Going by the summer and final recruitment trends at her school, she isn’t banking on campus placements and has started looking for an internship on her own. “Of the 70 seniors, just 30 have been placed so far, and most of them are looking for a job on their own too. They aren’t banking solely on campus placements,” says Kaushik. “Of the 102 students in the first-year batch, just seven or eight have got internships.”

Kaushik also says the salary packages are lower this year compared to last year. The average salary package at her school was ₹6.5 lakh last year. “Though many top companies have offered salaries in the ₹5-6 lakh range, as time passes, the offers for the remaining students tend to go down,” she adds.

The situation is better at Noida-based Amity Business School. According to Sanjeev Bansal, Director of Amity Business School, almost 75 per cent of the 700 students are placed with a median salary of ₹6 lakh and nearly 200 companies have visited the campus.

“Last year, we had many banks recruiting from our campus. This year, the banks have decided to stay away but with 30-40 new companies visiting Amity this year, the entire batch is likely to be placed by mid-March,” says Bansal.

Some of the regular recruiters at Amity are TCS, TVS, Tata Motors, Deloitte, KPMG, and CRISIL.

A few other second-rung business schools have fared better. “At LBSIM, about 200 final year students, out of 240, have been placed already,” says Prof. P. K. Biswas, Director of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management. “By the end of first week March, we are hoping to place the complete batch.”

Various consulting, research, and advisory firms have recruited from LBSIM in large numbers. For instance, KPMG made 16 offers at the campus, whereas, Deloitte has made 10 offers at LBSIM.

Though the batch will get placed soon, salaries may not be the same as they were last year. “Salaries may not increase this year or may even drop marginally for us as the highest package (offered by Deloitte) is ₹10.5 lakh this year. Last year it was ₹11 lakh,” adds Biswas. The median salary at LBSIM was ₹7.2 lakh in 2013.

At Symbiosis Institute of Management (SIBM) Bangalore, the . final campus recruitment at the business school for a batch of 168 students started in November and more than 20 per cent of the batch is yet to be placed.

Companies are offering better profiles but making fewer offers than in previous years, according to an SIBM placements spokesperson. “Companies are now changing their hiring parameters and have started conducting novel processes, including elevator pitches, live projects etc,” says Harshit Shukla, student placement coordinator at SIBM. The institute is hosting 60 per cent more new recruiters this year. Some of the companies hiring for the first time here include DE Shaw, Puma, Piaggio, UB Group, SAP Labs, L&T Construction and The Smart Cube. The median salary last year was ₹7.68 lakh.

Hiring may seem to have improved in top business schools but students from second and third tier management institutes are left with fewer prospects this year too. Kaushik will be spending a total of ₹9 lakh on her business education in two years but has little hope of finding a well-paying job. So the old question still arises – Is the MBA still a solution to one’s career woes?

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