BT-CoolAvenues Campus Hustings
Placement Ordinaire

2003 placement continues where placement 2002 ended. A lackluster placement, though a shade better, at Indian B-schools caps an ordinary year for the businesses. But there were good offers everywhere for the students who deserved the best.

Gone are the days of thumbs-up and rooftop shouting seen in heady days of 1999 and 2000. Gone are the days of newspapers reporting "18 hour placements" and each of the B-School racing for shortest placements, as if it is not recruitment but some kind of photo finish race. But two years of recession, US corporate scandals and flat sensex has forced B-Schools and its graduates to look at things more somberly.

The B-schools went into the placements with an air of uncertainty. The atmosphere was charged with expectations and excitement, tinged with a touch of apprehension over the economic downturn spilling over from the last year. But as the placement process got under way, it proved the initial fears unfounded as it took only a matter of two days at most B-schools to place the majority of the batch.

One major trend of 2003 placements was the resurgence of IT. And IT consulting emerged as the star of the placements. Leading IT firms were there to choose the best for the range of IT areas like business development and customer relationship. IT bandwagon was led by, who else but Infosys! Infosys led IT recruitments in most campuses it went. HCL Technologies also was a front-runner. Wipro, CTS, TCS, PCS etc., also made their presence felt, albeit TCS and Polaris showed a decline over last years offers… Happy days are here again…

FMCG, the perennial giant, was there. Excellent marketing profiles were there for the students with a flair for marketing. P&G, with Singapore postings, took the cake. HLL was a regular favourite as always. ITC, Asian Paints, GE, Pepsi and Coke recruited students in large numbers to spearhead their marketing initiatives.

Banking spearheaded the Finance sector drive to pick the best. Bank of America had one of the best salaries. Standard Chartered Bank, ABN Amro, ICICI Bank, UTI Bank, Citibank and IndusInd Bank were some of the other recruiting banks. GE Capital was another big recruiter with fat paychecks at most campuses. IIMA led the financial sector with dollar salaries in Deutsche Bank, Lehman Bros, ABN Amro, Capital One and Citigroup (making a debut in India). Foreign recruiters whose offers had already been snapped up prior to placements were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley as usual.

Overall, placement 2003 showed some sign of economic recovery as IT marched back into the B-Schools with renewed vigor and finance also performed better than expected. Probably good times are coming again for the class of 2004…

CoolAvenues' Editorial

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