Tier-II B-Schools get active to attract best placements

[dhilipkumar]

KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: India's tier-II management schools are casting their net wider this year for the approaching campus placement season, as the economic slowdown makes it harder for even top business schools to lure high-profile companies.

Second-rung schools are aggressively tapping alumni and inviting more companies from so-called stable sectors like manufacturing, besides approaching unusual recruiters such as non-government organisations (NGOs). The tier-II institutes adopting such tactics, include Jamshedpur's XLRI, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIM-B); Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) in Mumbai; and IMT Ghaziabad. The economic slowdown has forced lay-offs across several industry sectors in the past few months, dampening the prospect of companies scouting for talent even in top B-Schools and leaving tier-II institutes under greater pressure.

"Although we do not anticipate any change in our salaries, the number of offers per company might go down this year. So we plan to call more companies on campus," said Nandini Shah, corporate relations committee at JBIMS. According to XLRI Jamshedpur, it's keen on NGOs, while XIM-B and JBIMS are luring companies from new sectors like infrastructure finance. It plans to invite 100 companies to the campus this year, up from 60 last year. Expectations of average salary levels for this year's batch are also subdued.

"I think there may be a cut in offer packages this time, but students are prepared for it," said E Abraham, director at XLRI. XIM-B's student placement committee co-ordinator Naveen K Agarwal said: "There may not be a phenomenal increase in the salary packages compared with last year, but in terms of offers, we think there will be a good balance."

JBIMS, which clocked an average salary of Rs 13.84 lakh during 2008 and the highest offer of Rs 29 lakh, expects that firms looking for talent in areas such as credit risk management may come to their campus this year, as the market collapse and the crisis gripping the banking system in the West puts risk into sharp focus. At IMT, Ghaziabad, the faculty expects manufacturing to be the dominant sector, replacing information technology and finance.

Placements at the institute started on January 5 and half the potential recruiters are expected to be from manufacturing. Sanjeev Prashar, placement chairperson, IMT, said: "Bulk recruiters (companies that picked up 20-25 students in one go) would be missing this year. And we also can't comment on what packages the students will get, as the companies themselves don't have much clarity on how many they would recruit."

The Institute of Management Education (IME), Ghaziabad, too, has revised its expectations because of the slowdown. Last year, its highest package was around Rs 5.3 lakh, which the institute anticipated could have gone up to Rs 10 lakh. With the economic crisis hitting home, the institute feels its students will be better off even with a package of Rs 4-5 lakh. "We know, we are not the IIMs, so we have to put in that much extra efforts to get students placed," said IME director DP Goel.