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

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To put things in perspective, Indian PSUs have been able to recruit from IIMs this year, e.g., BPCL, a public sector oil major, was also a recruiter at IIM Bangalore. Given govt.-regulated pay scales and well-defined entry level for management trainees, no way the salary offered by BPCL including all perks can be beyond INR 4 Lakhs.

Statistics, Statistics & Statistics: Devil in Details

Placements 2007 is a bumper year or an average year or a disappointing year. If you try to figure that out from all reports and press releases, chances are that the picture will be as rosy as hopes of UPA govt. about poverty eradication by Budget 2007. The media is full with, "Jobs are raining at... India calling... Crorepati grads at IIMs," so it seems a bumper year. Well, we tend to disagree. As per CoolAvenues internal metrics, this year can be seen at best as an average year in a booming market. There were no great additions, and despite all talk and hoopla, not many venture funds and private equity players were present barring some instances, and the corporate list was a regular list, i.e., Mckinsey, E&Y, D&T, Bain & Co., HLL, ICICI, P&G, UTI, HPCL, and so on and so forth... So any thing great compared to last year??? Well nothing really.

Other unfortunate aspect of this statistics is calculation of key figures. As per CoolAvenues internal research, in lateral job market, the fixed salary offered to an IIM profile of 2001 Batch by a leading bank in India was around INR 15 Lakhs. The same bank also happened to be Day One Slot One across all IIMs, and so what they will be paying to Batch of 2007 is anybody's guess. However, if average salary this year is around INR 14 Lakhs, then does it mean Day One Slot One recruiter pays less than the institute average or they pay more to fresh graduates as compared to experienced profiles!!!

The salary offer may contain all kinds of inclusions like overseas training costs, housing loan costs, canteen costs, transport costs, and ends up inflating salaries which are further flashed to the world by the Institute without doing any due diligence as they are in the race to dish out better results. But what is the truth, nobody knows, as all said and done, remuneration data is a very private affair of a corporate as it is part of its business strategy, and hence, can't be given out to everybody, but unfortunately, these confidentiality clauses are creating a scenario where data is dressed up liberally to win the race against peer institutes.

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