Dream jobs back at Joka

Big bucks and global brands are back at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, which started its placement season on the Joka campus on Saturday.

The total number of offers in Slot Zero — the coveted bracket for headhunters to pick the best brains from the B-school — zoomed from last year’s 39 to 90, signalling an end to the downturn blues that had cast a shadow on placements across B-school campuses.

“At the end of the second day of placements, we have already got 215 offers for a batch of 280,” said Samyukktha Thirumeni, the secretary of the external relations cell at IIM Calcutta.

The placements at IIM Calcutta started with 125 offers in hand, which included lateral placement offers made to students with work experiences and pre-placement offers (PPOs) made to students from companies where they had undergone a two-month internship.

Campus sources said over 160 students would sign out of the placement process with a dream job offer in hand by the end of Day 2 of Slot Zero.

Finance firms, which have traditionally recruited big at IIM Calcutta, dominated Slot Zero this year too, making more than 30 offers.

The offers came from banks like Nomura, UBS, Deutsche Bank, American Express and HSBC, with locations spread across the globe, including London, Hong Kong and Singapore. UBS, the Swiss investment Bank, hired exclusively from IIM Calcutta after a year’s hiatus.

After financial firms, consulting and FMCG companies were the biggest recruiters in Slot Zero. Hindustan Unilever, Proctor&Gamble, Nokia, Johnson & Johnson and ITC were among the leading global FMCG brands that recruited from the campus.

Hindustan Unilever and Proctor&Gamble made four offers each, while Tata Administrative Services’ Leadership Program recruited 17 students.

The US-based consulting firm, Oliver Wyman, hired for its offices in New York, London, Singapore and Dubai. Other consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Co and A.T. Kearney also recruited from the campus.

“The mood on campus is upbeat with more than half the students getting a dream offer within two days,” said a second-year student.


The Telegraph Metro