POST BONANZA
Recruitment blitz: Four days
Average offer: Rs 6.12 lakh
Highest offer: Rs 8 lakh
Lowest offer: Rs 4 lakh
Star recruiters: IBM, PwC, Citigroup, Infosys, Tata Technologies, Wipro, HCL Technologies, McKinsey, Ernst & Young, AF Ferguson, IDBI, RBI, Maruti, Ashok Leyland?
It is not unusual for recruiters from top-notch companies to queue up at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur to shop for the best of engineering brains.
But when head-hunters from the same league scramble for students in the management school in the country?s oldest IIT, the shoppers? stop demands a closer look.
With all 49 students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management being placed in less than four days, the institute, set up with emoluments from US-based alumnus Vinod Gupta, is now firmly in the forefront of competing B-schools.
Salary levels for the students of the 11-year-old institute on the 54-year-old campus have soared to new heights, with recruiters outbidding each other.
?The average salary grew from Rs 5.6 lakh last year to Rs 6.12 lakh this year. The highest salary offered was Rs 8 lakh, while the minimum on offer was Rs 4 lakh,? said Gautam Sinha, professor-in-charge of training and placement at IIT Kharagpur.
The list of recruiters included IBM, Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citigroup, Infosys, Bajaj Auto, Tata Technologies, Wipro, WPP Maxus (Group M), HCL Technologies, McKinsey, Ernst & Young, AF Ferguson, IDBI, RBI, Murugappa Group, Tata Motors, Maruti, Ashok Leyland, Eicher Motors, Caterpillar and Tata International.
The students were placed across all functional areas, ranging from consulting to financial services.
?This year?s placement has been phenomenal. Some companies could not even take part in the process, as the entire batch was placed by then,? said Sinha, who is also in-charge of placements for students enrolled in B.Tech, M. Tech, M.Sc, MS and doctoral programmes.
According to Sinha, pitching B-school boys and girls for prospective recruiters is like ?niche marketing?, where the students are to be placed in proper positions according to the skill-set.
?But because of the sheer volume, the same job for the tech graduates is like retailing,? added Sinha.
This year saw the institute?s management programme matching the engineering stream as far as salary ceiling goes, with both rising to Rs 8 lakh per annum.
Refusing to compare apples with oranges, Sinha stressed on the great divide between the two disciplines and the demands from companies coming to the campus.
?Even the process of placement is different. For the tech students, the placement starts some time in August and continues till June. We have already placed 90 per cent of them,? said Sinha.
