The Hindu : National : Global meltdown leaves IIMA unscathed; all its students get placement for on-job training

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Global meltdown leaves IIMA unscathed; all its students get placement for on-job training

Manas Dasgupta

IIMA Director Samir Barua now a relieved man

AHMEDABAD: The global economic meltdown has not impacted the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to the extent apprehended, with all its 300 students in the Post-Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management and all the 21 in the PGP Agri-Business Management (PGP-ABM) being comfortably placed in the next year’s summer placements for on-job training projects.

IIMA Director Samir Barua, who earlier expressed the apprehension of the likely impact of the global economic recession on the IIMA campus, was a relieved man as the five-day summer placement camp, which started on November 13, concluded on Tuesday with all its students eligible for placements accommodated by various companies.

Despite the reduction this year in the offers made on the very first day of summer placements compared to last year, apparently due to the slowdown in the global economy, there was no serious impact on the overall line-up. Barring the Lehman Brothers, already declared bankrupt, all the prominent international banks and financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, turned up to give IIMA students offers for summer placements.

“The trend we have seen in this placement season is that as the mandate of recruiters in terms of numbers falls, they choose to be more selective about the campuses they visit,” Dr. Barua said.

He claimed that many recruiters preferred students only from the IIMA and not other business schools.

“They have continued to show faith in the quality of the IIMA students and reaffirmed the strength of the relationships the IIMA has with the corporate world.”

In all, 117 domestic and multi-national companies attended the camp giving offers to the IIMA students for short-term summer placements, including as many as 90 international offers made to the students.

Compared to last year’s 265 students, the batch size this year had gone up to 300 due to the increase in the number of seats, and significantly all of them had received offers.

In the PGP-ABM course, 27 companies turned up for 21 students giving them 28 offers but the students accepted offers from only 14 companies, he said.

Dr. Barua declined to disclose the stipend figures, pointing out that it was not an important factor for the summer placements, where the students go for challenging projects to be trained better for the future rather than the lure of money for a very short period.

Sectoral impact

The recession, however, had impacted the sectoral divisions in the offers with the finance sector, that gave 56 per cent offers in 2006 and 57 per cent the last year, coming down to 32 per cent this year, while marketing went up from 14 per cent in 2006 and 13 per cent last year to 23 per cent this year and consultancy going up from 16 per cent in 2006 to 22 per cent last year and 26 per cent this year.

For the first time, the Planning Commission attended the IIMA summer placements, recruiting four students and the Forward Market Commission two students.

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