The virtual recruitment process being adopted by corporates at B-schools has come as a respite for many of the newer Indian Institute of Management (IIM) institutes which have been set up across smaller towns and cities.
Some of these newer IIMs had comparatively lower batch size as compared to the older IIMs such as IIMA, IIMB and IIMC, and were set up in “odd” locations thereby acting as a deterrent for some large corporate to visit the campus for recruitments. However, now with the whole process being conducted online through virtual platforms, companies have been stepping up recruitments from these campuses, industry insiders said.
According to Prof Mahadeo Jaiswal, Director, IIM Sambalpur, earlier a majority of big recruiters would prefer going to bigger towns but now with the whole process of recruitment going online, they have also been recruiting from IIMs in smaller towns.
“It has turned out as an advantage for us since every company is now doing recruitment online. Earlier they would not prefer coming to our campus due to odd locations and fewer number of students as compared to the older IIMs but now with the whole process going online they haven’t been differentiating between IIMs,” Jaiswal told BusinessLine on Campus .
Increased participation
IIM Sambalpur had close to 140 companies including Nielsen, Reliance Retail, Ramco Systems, Tech Mahindra, Mindtree, Amul, Vedanta, HCL, SBI Life and Tata Steel BSL among others visiting the campus this season. The graduates were offered diverse roles across marketing, sales, BFSI, operations, consulting, analytics and ITeS among others. The institute witnessed more than 90 per cent increase in the companies visited for recruitment thereby surpassing its previous placement records.
The institute also saw more than 110 companies participate in summer placement process for batch strength of 157 students. It also had a pool of first-time recruiters including Google, Adani Ports, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., Bank of Baroda, IMCD India, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, DSM Group and IBM among others.
IIM Bodh Gaya also achieved a 100 per cent placement record for its largest ever batch size of 109 students. It had close to 50 recruiters who extended over 100 plus offers across domains and industries, the institute said in a press statement issued recently.
Lower demand for fresh hirings
The campus life and experience is considered an integral part of the life of a management graduate, however, the current situation has made it difficult for students to be on campus and most of the learning has shifted to virtual platform. There have been concerns around the efficacy of online structure in terms of knowledge sharing and creating employable candidates at most institutes. Moreover, it was felt that the virtual process of recruitments may not have the richness of face-to-face interactions with the candidates.
According to Shantanu Rooj, Founder and CEO, TeamLease Edtech, with all MBA graduates across various institutes going through online curriculum, recruiters have little choice available. Organisations looking to hire fresh graduates would prefer students from IIMs and other top B-schools as even the quality of online education would be far better in these institutes as compared to the second or third rung B-schools.
“Though there is a lot of difference between in-room class and virtual class but we have to remember that virtual classes were started under a compulsion (due to the pandemic) and the industry takes note of it. I do not see that impacting the recruitment process. However, the overall demand for hiring is down and except for a few industries such as IT, pharma and healthcare, the demand for jobs in other sectors has come down,” RP Yadav, CMD, Genius Consultants Ltd said.