February saw FMS place its largest batch ever. As the outgoing class waits to begin its corporate role, the Corporate Relations and Placements (CRAP) team is congratulating itself for a job well done. This year FMS had close to 74 companies visiting the campus. The success can be gauged by the fact that the offers per student shot up from 1.2 to 1.4 in spite of the increase in batch size.

This year a decision was taken to take 'number-of-offers-per-student' and 'quality-of-jobs' as the measure of performance. Opinions on the experiment of a stretched out recruitment process are unanimous. If the results are any indication, both the students and the recruiters seem to have endorsed it. While the students have had greater number of jobs to choose from, this placement model gives the recruiters an opportunity to get to see all the interested applicants. This has resulted in a greater understanding of the hiring needs of the companies and job satisfaction for the students. FMS hopes that this would help lay foundation for greater opportunities for all concerned.

The 2003 Placements at FMS received an overwhelming response from the top-level firms from all over the country. The campus witnessed 11 Pre Placement offers and 17 Laterals. Some of the Regular domestic recruiters who participated at the placements were ABN AMRO Bank, Cadbury's, Colgate Palmolive, Coke, Citibank, CRISIL, GE, Hewitt Associates, HCL Tech, HLL, HSBC, ITC, Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser, Standard Chartered Bank, TAS, and Whirlpool among others.

Apart from these, FMS had a few firms, based in Europe and U.S.A., come in for their foreign divisions. Notable among them were Blue Star Infotech, CSG Singapore and Roulac.

Rohan Arora, a 2nd year student echoed this sentiment when he said, "…there is little point in getting everyone placed within a day if everybody would be happier with a slightly more stretched schedule and jobs of one's liking. I think as a community we should stop chasing quantity and focus on quality."

2003 Placements: Key Statistics

• 11/84: Pre Placement Offers
• 17/84: Lateral offers
• 04/84: Returned to Pre-MBA employer
• 06/84: International offers
• 84/84: Total of 116 job offers made

FMCG's and Banks continued to hold sway with Infotech making a strong comeback. Amongst the new companies recruiting for the first time were names like Wipro and CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) in IT, SBI Capital Markets in Investment Banking, Jubilant in SCM, Iffco Tokio in Insurance, KSA Technopak in Retail Consulting. Amongst those who returned back after a hiatus were Asian Paints and Marico in FMCG's, Telco, L&T, Eicher and Sterlite in the Manufacturing Sector, Kotak Group in the Financial Sector.

"Our commitment to offer a wide array of courses in various specialised disciplines seems to have gone well with the recruiters. This is represented in the average number of offers made per student. We had decided this year that instead of chasing time deadlines to wrap up our placements, we'd bring the recruiters and the students together in an environment where the students, and recruiters, could take their best picks…", said Dr. H. D. Gupta, the Placements Advisor. Dr. Gupta also said that the companies have welcomed the initiative and that he had strong confidence that this model is here to stay.

Harman Dhillon, the Secretary of Corporate Relations and Placement said, "This experiment is a part of an ambitious long-term strategy. We want to offer huge amount of choices to the students. The Slot system helped us achieve that."

The outgoing class is obviously thrilled. Vyjayanthi Seshadri, a 2nd year student at FMS, has accepted a role at Citibank. "After my summers with Accenture last year, I had set a high goal. It is truly a great opportunity and I really am looking forward to a career in banking."

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