Consulting, finance firms are top recruiters during summer placements at B-Schools 

File image of the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (Image Source: IIM Lucknow/Facebook)

Top business schools (B-Schools) including elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have reported a robust summer placement season, with consulting and finance firms emerging as the leading recruiters on their campuses.

Sure, the placement season spread over October and November at top B-Schools may not be the sole barometer of the larger labour market, but it does indicate that the outlook for employment is looking up. The final placement season on educational campuses over the next three to six months is likely to be buoyant.

At IIM-Calcutta, consulting and finance jointly accounted for a little more than half the summer placement candidates. IIM-C placed its 476 students with 142 firms, of which the finance sector hired 121 and consulting firms 120 students to emerge as the top two recruiters.

At XLRI Jamshedpur, summer placement data showed that around 27 percent of the 470 batch size was offered roles by consulting firms. The B-School received some 127 consulting offers from firms like Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bain and Co, Accenture Strategy, PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) and Deloitte, among others.

These firms were also among the leading recruiters at other top B-Schools.

Other than consulting firms, information technology (IT) and E-Commerce companies, consumer goods makers and banking and financial services were the other key recruiters, according to XLRI.

Similarly, IIM-Lucknow, IIM-Indore and IIM-Kozhikode and Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi too have completed their summer placements. At IIM-I, at least 25 percent of the batch was hired by consulting firms, followed by domains like sales and marketing and finance. More leading B-Schools are expected to join the bandwagon over the next one month.

At IIM-Kozhikode, sales and marketing, consulting and finance firms were the most sought after roles on campus, contributing up to 73 percent of the total offers made during summer placements this year, according to data available on the B-School’s website.

At IIM-Kozhikode, 132 recruiters participated in the drive to offer paid internships to 559 students. At IIM-Lucknow, recruiters made 567 offers to 562 candidates during the summer placement drive.

At Bhavan’s SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, at least 52 firms offered 260 offers for 238 participants during its autumn internship season, and sectors like consumer goods, consulting, and financial services and E-Commerce were key recruiters.

Industry insights 

Across top B-School campuses, recruiters like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered, Axis Capital, Bank of America, Blackstone, Aditya Birla Group, Hindustan Unilever, Amazon, Flipkart, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, ITC, Capgemini and Google were among others who rolled out offers during the virtual summer placements.

Summer placements helps students gain industry insights before they formally enter the jobs market full time. They also offer recruiters insights about the candidates’ job aptitudes for available and emerging positions. They often result in pre-placement offers (PPOs) or jobs before the final placement season kicks in at B-Schools in February-April.

The summer placement season at B-Schools also showed that median compensation was growing between 6 percent and 16 percent this year. For example, XLRI saw the median stipend for the entire batch increase by 16 percent and at IIM-Indore, the median stipend increased by 9 percent. This also hints at a revival in the white collar jobs market at the entry level.

After a brief drop in active openings for two months, entry-level openings grew 18 percent to reach the 100,000 mark in October. Entry-level openings continued to power the Active Job counts with a 31 percent overall contribution by volume, according to a recent survey by XPheno, a specialist staffing firm.