81 companies participated in the Placements 2003 process at SPJIMR, Mumbai, out of which 18 companies were unable to see candidates since there were none left.

Some of the companies that came in on Day One included HLL, Tata Group, GE group, Cadbury's, Nestle, Perfetti, Asian Paints, Wipro Group, Pepsi CO.

HCL, GE & Tata group picked up the highest number of students, i.e., 12 each.

Oracle, Dubai was on campus and SPJIMR conducted video conferencing interviews with their seniors at Dubai resulting in 2 offers. They are exploring initiating a scholarship at SPJIMR in the likes of GE.

Marketing & Finance-related profiles posted the highest entry-level demand.

Operations and Information Management were the sectors where there was a demand from companies for lateral-level recruitments.

The US-based Trinity corporation offered the highest salary of Rs.12.9 lac per annum. CTC which recruited from only 3 campuses in Mumbai offering the same maximum CTC compensation.

At the end of Day 1, 120 students had accepted offers and opted out of placements. On Day 2, there were 15 companies meeting only 10 candidates. SPJIMR had to tell a few companies not to visit since the students had already been placed. Public sector Oil companies offering packages of nearly 5 lacs had to go empty handed, since the quorum of minimum 10 candidates for a GD (required as per their policy) could not be formed.

A large number of CEOs, COOs, MDs & Directors visited the campus this time, e.g., Scott Bayman of GE, Martin Kriegner of Lafarge, Iqbal Singh of GE SBI, Ramesh Padmanabhan of Mphasis, R. B. Menon of Cadbury, Shanti Ekambaram of Kotak, Sanjiv Chopra of Boston Scientific, Shashi Maudgal of A. V. Birla group, S. Roy Choudury of HPCL, A. K. Dhingra of Perfetti.

SPJIMR also had a large number of senior Alumni visiting the campus for placements.

High level of faculty involvement was also seen. Every company was greeted by faculty on arrival and seen off at the gate at the end of the process by faculty. Some recruiters also spent time with the Dean, Dr. M. L. Shrikant.

Extensive use of mobile phones which were provided by the Institute to the students helped in coordinating the large number of companies on campus. Two-way radios announced the arrival of companies on the campus and video-conferencing equipment was used for interviews from Oracle, Dubai.

Minute by minute placement process, which would start at 8 am in the morning and last till midnight, was recorded by students which were attached to each faculty.

A large number of companies have accepted the idea of coming back in mid-february 2003 to select first year students for DOCC projects which will be integrated with Autumns and final placements.

This year SPJIMR integrated the autumn placement with the final placements which resulted an all-time-high of 31 Preplacement offers, of which 27 were accepted. GE group, TAS, Telco, J&J, Wipro, are the companies which gave PPOs after Autumns and came back to campus for more candidates.

Next year, SPJIMR will be extending this initiative to Development of Corporate Citizenship (DOCC) projects where the students work with an NGO or CSR division of a corporate to get sensitized to real India. This implies that the companies can pick up a said number of students, put them through a project with their own NGO or an NGO sponsored by them, evaluate how the student works in an unstructured environment, offer them Autumn projects in their companies in September and if found suitable, give them PPOs. This will in effect eliminate the hyped-up auction process which takes place during the final placements, and result in a more informed choice on both the part of the companies and the students.

Placement data...

Mail your comments at: webmaster@coolavenues.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------