India Education & Career

January 13,2010 17:53 IST: Amongst positive vibes about improved markets and increased hiring, IIT Bombay entered its placement season with high expectations and has lived up to every bit of it in its first month. 120 companies have visited the campus so far and over 500 offers have been made through on campus and pre-placement offers. More than 180 companies have confirmed their presence in the process so far with several more in the pipeline.

The process began in August itself with pre-placement talks, which are an excellent opportunity for companies to interact with and familiarize students with their organization and the work profile offered by them. The final recruitments began only on 1st of December 2009 and will continue this year till 100% placements are achieved. Approximately 1160 students graduating from various graduate and post-graduate programmes offered by IIT Bombay are participating in the process this year.

‘Day 1’

The ‘Day 1’ at placements of IIT Bombay saw 21 firms participate in the process where about 150 students belonging to all programmes of the institute competed for some of the most coveted jobs in the industry. A total of 81 jobs were offered on Day 1, all belonging to the high end job market, confirming the signs of rapid economic recovery. There was a 100 percent increase over last year in the number of jobs offered on Day 1.

Inclination towards technical sector

It has been observed that students have shown a remarkable inclination towards the technical sector with more students wanting to opt for core engineering and technology firms. Many students have shown a growing preference for organizations like Cisco, Sony, Daimler, Eaton amongst others. This shift is primarily attributed to the more attractive work profiles and packages offered to IIT Bombay graduates by these companies.

Increased prominence in the Management Consulting sphere

This year 8 leading management consultants visited IIT Bombay for campus recruitment. These included the top 5 firms in the world – McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co., Booz & Company and The Monitor Group. These organizations work with large corporations across the globe and help them resolve complex business problems. They are relatively small groups of versatile professionals and carry a repute of being very selective in the campuses they recruit from and having extremely high bars in their recruitment process.

While some of these consultants were regular visitors at IIT Bombay, others like Alvarez &

Marsal recruited for the first time from IITs and exclusively from IIT Bombay and have expressed pleasure with the quality of recruits.

Diverse recruiters

While the placement season has seen recruiters from the entire spectrum of the industry, some sectors like financial services and FMCG have come up strongly as compared to others. The initial part of the season was dominated by a variety of firms from sectors like management consulting, engineering, banking and FMCG. These firms which included McKinsey, Sony Japan, IBM, Intel, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and P&G are world leaders in their respective domains.

Strengthening financial services sector

After spending almost about a year in uncertainty, the finance sector returned to its hiring plans with full swing and has so far been one of the major recruiters. These organizations, including Tower Research Capital, Morgan Stanley, J P Morgan, Credit Suisse and Nomura have recruited in large numbers. As many as 60 offers have been made by the financial services sector to IITB students.

IIT Bombay, set up by an Act of Parliament, was established in 1958, at Powai, a northern suburb of Mumbai. Today the Institute is recognised as one of the centres of academic excellence in the country. Over the years, there has been substantial progress at IIT Bombay in all academic and research activities, and a parallel improvement in facilities and infrastructure, to keep it at par with the best institutions in the world. Institutes in positions of excellence grow with time. The ideas and ideals on which such institutes are built evolve and change with national aspirations, national perspectives, and trends world – wide. IIT Bombay, too, is one such institution. On an average, the institute admits 700 candidates for the undergraduate programme through Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), 170 candidates for M.Sc. programmes, 850 candidates for different postgraduate programmes and 300 for Ph.D programmes every year.