Placements 2007: Code of Silence, Statistics and Much Ado About Everything

Placements 2007 at top Indian B-schools took off from last year's placements at a much positive note as every cue since then has been much better than expected. Indian economy has gone into further over-drive with a target of sustained GDP growth rate of 9-10%, with India Story becoming more and more credible to the world over.
Nothing could define the overall sentiment more than the statement by International media, "If you are not in India, you are missing something."

But unfortunately, during all this positive note and excitement, Placements 2007 didn't turn out to be as extraordinary as expected. This year again, we had usual media headlines of IIM grads becoming Crorepatis or fresh students abandoning Investment Banking jobs at foreign locations for desi shores, and the now-routine stories about certain percentage going for entrepreneurship or social sector, showing an overall great year placements-wise, or as they say, another good season. However, Placements 2007 with all its eye-popping salaries, became significant for some other reasons as well where some IIMs decided not to release salary data, while some used company confidentiality clause to hide names while flaunting highest salary and median salary, and almost all of them gave figures which were hiding more than what they were revealing.

The Placements 2007 took a different twist when IIM Bangalore decided to take a leaf out of Mario Puzo's book and implemented 'Code of Silence', which was quickly followed by IIM Lucknow.

Over the last few years, placements at IIMs have been under increasing media stare and have become a kind of media circus where whole recruitment exercise shifted from being a simple recruitment exercise to a media attention-grabbing exercise, where each institute seems to be in a race to prove itself by way of placements data. In fact the hype went so high last year that some IIMB students dashed a letter to IIMB Director and expressed fear about their safety. The result was even more masala for media. So when IIMB decided to implement code of silence on salary details and other vital figures, it looked like the whole sheen has gone out of placements coverage if seen from media perspective. In fact the disappointed was so high that a leading newspaper carried a story with the title, "IIMs Veil Data, Bury the Placement Charm."

However, this is not the first time IIMs have barred media. Earlier in 2005, IIMs had decided to withdraw from B-school Rankings (Click here to read "IIMs Snub MBA Rankings"), which resulted in a huge hue and cry, and the impact was considered so fatal that Business Standard even wrote an editorial on it.

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