The salaries domestic companies offer B-school graduates are up. That's the good news. The bad news? The top salary foreign companies are offering is lower than it was last year.
McKinsey & Company offered three Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), students Rs 14 lakh (Rs 1.4 million) a year at the final campus placement between March 10 and March 16.
But the average salary offered by a domestic company has increased this year to Rs 6.2 lakh from Rs 5.9 lakh in 2002.
The median salary offered by a domestic company too has increased from Rs 5.5 lakh last year to Rs 6 lakh this year.
Foreign institutional Investor Capital One International offered the highest annual salary this year of $82,000 (over Rs 39,36,000) to an IIM-A graduate.
The top annual foreign salary offered last year to an IIM-A graduate (by JP Morgan Chase) was $1,55,000 (about Rs 74,40,000).
But, as Raj Subramanium, independent head of IIM-A's placement committee, points out: "Last year the student was taken by JP Morgan at a senior level as he had experience in a company before coming to IIM-A. This year's highest salary of $82,000 is more than last year's second highest for a IIM student joining a company at entry level."
But the average foreign salary offered is expected to have decreased slightly from last year's $75,000.
In all, 36 jobs overseas were offered, the same as last year, but the recruiting base was more diverse than before. The foreign jobs were almost equally divided across the US, the UK and the Asia Pacific region.
Says an IIM-A official, "The year 2003 saw the emergence of commercial banking and finance as a dominant recruiting sector, in addition to investment banking and sales and marketing. This is in contrast to 2002 where the dominant recruiting sectors were sales and marketing, investment banking and IT."
Most of the foreign jobs offered related to investment banking, apart from marketing and general management positions.
Interestingly, of the foreign recruiters, five companies recruit only at IIM-A in India.
They include Goldman Sachs which has recruited four students for its London office; ABN Amro International (one each for its offices in London, Hong Kong and Singapore); Merrill Lynch (one IIM-A student for its US office); Morgan Stanley (one for its Hong Kong office) and Citigroup Asset Management (two for its US offices).
Seventy Indian and foreign companies future managers participated in the placement this year, up from 45 last year. A total of 184 students of the batch of 2001-2003 found jobs.
The placement process this year was extended to accommodate a number of pre-processes, and to give both interviewers and candidates more time for selection.
Final placements were preceded by very encouraging statistics during summer 2002 placements (39 of the batch of 2002-2004 were placed overseas and many more found domestic marketing and finance jobs) and during lateral placements (graduating students with work experience got more consulting and marketing jobs) 2003.
This year, the National Kidney Foundation, a Singapore-based NGO, visiting the campus the first time for final placements.
Air India, which had walked out of placements, returned to IIM-A this year after 20 years.
In addition, a number of Indian finance and marketing companies also visited campus for the first time, offering a wider range of opportunities to students.