In setting a record of sorts the final placements at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar got over in 30 hours flat. The hard work of the entire year for the batch of 2002-2004 culminated in fabulous final placements..

The process began on the morning of 8th of January, 2004 (Day One) which was perhaps the coldest day in Bhubaneswar in recent memory. By midnight the count was 110 students placed and the process continued through the night with companies coming in as and when their flights landed. By noon next day the process was over and the partying started. In a dramatic shift from the placement scenario last year when offers were hard to come by, this year every student had one unique offer and many people had more than 4 simultaneous offers. Some people had a difficult time deciding which offer to accept.

The downside was that many companies scheduled for day two had nothing left to pick from. Lot of companies were called up and requested not to make the trip to Bhubaneswar as the process had got over before anticipated.

For the numbers crazy, more than 155 offers were generated for a batch of 120 people which means there were more than 1.32 offers per candidate.

Infosys made the maximum number of offers - 16, followed by Polaris with 9 offers, Frost & Sullivan with 8 offers and Wipro group companies with 8 offers. The real heavyweights on campus included Aditya Birla Group, Britannia, Dabur, Dr. Reddy's Lab, GE India, Godrej, Marico, Pricewater house Coopers and Tata Motors.

Among lateral recruiters Blowplast, Eicher Goodearth, Infosys, Insight Asia, J P Morgan, Kanbay, Mphasis, Polaris, Tata Interactive Systems and Wipro Infotech, all made handsome offers.

Some notable organizations who confirmed participation or visited the XIMB campus for the first time were Birlasoft, BPCL, Cavin Kare, Delphi Automotive Systems, Frost and Sullivan, GAIL, HPCL, Insight Asia, Iffco Tokio, IOC, JP Morgan, Kotak Group, Lowe Lintas, Ma Foi Consultants, Mahindra British Telecom, Sonata Software, State Bank of India.

This year at XIMB, there was a nice representation from all kinds of industries and business including auditing, automobiles, asset management, cement, HR consulting, insurance, investment banking, market research, FMCG, peripherals, project consulting, software, specialty chemicals, etc. Some of the appointments have been to extremely good posts like business analysts, project consultants, deputy managers, etc. Noticeable was the fact that this year the two combinations most in demand were Systems with Finance and Marketing with HR.