Asian Window

This fortnight, India’s top business schools — the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata — hold job placement weeks, where companies vie to recruit the best and the brightest of the batch. Aparna Kalra in Mint on how companies jockey to recruit on the first day:

It has not yet reached a crescendo but across theIndian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this week,one question is finally being asked aloud: Is this really the best way? The top business schools kicked off placements on Tuesday, starting at IIM-Bangalore. But, this year, after several years of frantic hiring and high stress levels among both recruiters and candidates, there has been admission and recognition that reform is inevitable.

In some ways, the inflection is logical. It was only last year that a few IIMs took the drastic step of banning the “S” word-salary-and discussions of it during placements. The IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata each have a five-day or week-long process but, in real terms, the fight for the country’s most- sought-after business school talent is over in a day or two at every campus.

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Behind IIM’s placements: A first-person account

On the condition of anonymity, a recruiter from one such company spoke to Mint’s Aparna Kalra on his experience.

I graduated from an IIM, so I am part of the IIM system but in my time placements were not the circus that they have become now.
I feel that all the gaming that is going on is completely unnecessary. The placements are also based on some socialist principles to ensure that everyone gets a job. Theyhave to be based on market clearing forces.

They have to be more open and a rolling process as it is in business schools in the US. I have recruited at top schools there and the system was simple. Each company came with a list of candidates it wanted to interview, candidates showed up for the interview; at the end of the day the company got a chance to calibrate the candidates against each other and make offers. The candidates were given a lot of time, typically two months, to make up their minds.

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