As the summer slowly heats up in India, a few lucky students from Indian Institute of Management will be off to colder climates the world over. Summer placements help IIM students secure lucrative foreign job offers.
At IIM-Bangalore, 17 foreign summer placement offers were made by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Lehman Brothers, National Kidney Foundation, Singapore and Olam Group, Singapore.
"The number of firms participating in the placements process rose over the years. Besides, there is improvement in the nature of jobs being offered," says chairman Mritiunjoy Mohanty.
"Today's MBAs are increasingly being called upon to provide services in far-off countries like Brazil and Thailand," says Aparna Bharadwaj of IIM-Lucknow.
"Our institutes are committed to producing managers with a global outlook, who would be completely aware of management methodologies across geographical locations."
The summer job placement process began more than four months ago. "A hectic first round in early October 2002 saw the highest average number of offers per company at IIM, Bangalore in recent years," says Ganesh Prabhu, chairperson, placements, IIM-Bangalore.
"The summer placements progressed smoothly towards completion, with the entire post-graduate program batch of 211 being placed in 75 companies by January 2003," he adds. Over 80 companies recruited students from IIM-Calcutta.
There is a rise in the inflow of students with prior work experience to IIMs, mostly due to a slump in the job market.
The largest number of IIM-Bangalore students are in the age group of 24 to 26 years, and with 1 to 2 years work experience.
"The presence of students with significant work experience makes the batch attractive to recruiters," says Mohanty.
For the first time, insurance firms and NGOs made a foray into summer recruitment at IIM-Calcutta. Sectors like automobile, IT consulting and manufacturing also made a comeback after a few relatively quiet years.
Around 10 IIM-Calcutta students got summer jobs in I-banking sector despite the restructuring the sector is undergoing.
Lateral placements are also underway for graduating students with work experience. At IIM-Bangalore, 60 graduating students who already had 18 months of industrial work experience started getting laterally placed from December 2002.
The rest are expected to combine lateral placements with the final placements scheduled in early March 2003.
Students from these institutes also participate in student exchange programmes, many of which lead to jobs overseas. IIM-Lucknow formed strategic alliances with top foreign universities. Each year, it sends top students to business schools abroad.
"A few second year students are also chosen sent to prestigious business schools in Europe and North America," says Bharadwaj of IIM-Lucknow.
"These future CEOs are looking at gaining quality business knowledge by working on live projects in foreign schools," adds Puneet Gulati, a first year IIM student.
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