IIM-B extends placement for second week

The global financial slowdown, perhaps for the first time in recent years, has forced premier B-school IIM-B to extend the placement process for the second week, which otherwise would have been completed in the first week itself. Industry sources say this is the problem with most other IIMs as there is not much of demand for the elite management graduates this year.

The gravity of the problem can be understood from the fact that while earlier recruiting companies were in a hurry to come for the placement at the earliest to take away the best of the students, now the placement committee is preferring to wait for the 'preferred' companies (recruiters) till they come for the placement as they are showing no sign of hurry.

"I am glad they are coming to us even in such a bad time. This year, definitely, there is not much demand in the market. In the absence of clear visibility on when the placement process will get over, we are prepared for an open-ended placement till the entire batch gets placed," Prof Sourav Mukherji, chairperson (placement), IIM-B said.

He said everybody is trying in his own way in bringing the best companies for the placement. The final placement in IIM-B started on Friday last week. According to sources in the placement cell, so far about 60 companies (including about 15-20 companies that attended the lateral placement happened in January-February this year) have participated in the process. There was, however, no comment on the number of students who have got offers as of now.

Most recruiting companies are going for campus interviews to the IIMs as they don't want their relationship with the premium B-schools to be affected. "We went there this year, as we don't want to damage our relationship," said Nandita Gurjar, Senior vice-president and group head of HR, at Infosys Technologies.

According to industry sources, there has been a very little or even no increase in salary offered to most of the IIM students this year. This has not, however, dampened the spirit of the students, as they understand this is a temporary phenomenon.