Pandemic no deterrent to recruitment at Indian School of Business

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, March 23

The unprecedented global crisis has not dampened the placement process of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP), 2021 students, at the Indian School of Business (ISB). 

A total of 1,145 acceptable offers were made by the end of the recently concluded placement week and the average accepted CTC was an all-time high of INR 28.29 lakhs, an increase of 8.32% as compared to last year’s CTC of INR 26.12 lakhs during the placement week. 

The top industries in terms of offers were consulting, IT/ITES/Technology, BFSI, FMCG/Retail and Pharma/Healthcare. 

The Urban Mobility industry too gave 35 offers reflecting the changing dynamics and growth of the business. Companies from FinTech, EdTech, AgriTech and Gaming showed traction in their hiring from ISB.

Professor Rajendra Srivastava, Dean, Indian School of Business (ISB) said that "the unprecedented global crisis has given ISB a new opportunity to reinvent and reorient teaching modules and learning approaches. Team ISB swiftly rose to the occasion and offered the finest and the much-needed pivoting to the students. The right calibration and future-ready focus on technology and analytics-enabled our students to find their place in key leadership and management positions in various organisations. ISB has always been a repository for the finest aptitude and new skill sets, and this year's placement reiterates this fact."

Almost all the top tier strategy, operation and technology consulting companies made their presence felt and made a total of 388 offers cutting across strategy, technology, transactional and operational consulting space—indicating a high number of opportunities available for students who wish to make a beginning in consulting companies immediately post ISB. 

Top Consulting firms included the likes of McKinsey & Company, Deloitte India, Deloitte USI, Accenture Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Bain & Company India Pvt. Ltd., Kearney, PwC, ZS Associates, KPMG, GEP Solutions, Alvarez and Marsal India Private Limited, L.E.K Consulting, Arthur D. Little, Ernst & Young LLP, EVERSANA, Dalberg and Intueri Consulting LLP.

Top private and MNC banks such as ICICI, Axis, Yes Bank, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Wells Fargo among others vied for talent from ISB and gave a good number of offers. In the investment banking space, Capital Partners and VC firm Matrix Partners continued its hiring from ISB. This year almost 9.5% of the total offers have come from the BFSI segment. 

This includes non-BFSI firms hiring for finance roles from ISB. The roles that ISB graduates landed were as diverse as corporate finance, treasury, private banking, investment management, investment banking, and fintech, among others.

ISB has 40 % of women students in the cohort, which is among the highest in leading business schools in this part of the world. Women-focused hiring programs such as Citibank’s Catalyst and Axis Bank’s WE Lead hired women candidates for their senior and middle-level leadership positions from ISB. 

Women candidates made their presence felt across sectors and functions and bagged 24 leadership roles from leading companies.

Marquee names along with startups in the domain of Payment Solutions, Analytics, HealthTech, Education, AgriTech, Retail among others continued robust hiring in Technology and Product Management space from the campus. Almost a quarter of total offers came from IT/ITES/Technology and E-Commerce space. Some prominent names that hired in this space are Microsoft, Flipkart, Uber, Cisco, Atlassian, RazorPay, Myntra, Ola Electric, Zynga, Electronic Arts, Nykaa, HiLabs, BeatO were among diverse E-commerce and technology companies that continued with their strong presence and offered multiple roles - Product, Sales, Project Management, Strategy and Operations within the tech space.

Conglomerates such as Reliance and Adani continued to engage with ISB to fulfil their prestigious leadership/management trainee programs with roles ranging from management trainees to executive assistants to CXOs. 5% of offers came from the pharma/healthcare space. Besides sales and marketing, some of the top FMCG MNCs picked up lateral talent from ISB in functions such as supply chain, operations, strategy, and finance.

Reflecting on the changed business scenario, ISB executed a complete online placement process. Organised virtually, the high-volume multi-layered placement process has elicited an overwhelming response from the companies. The average offer yield per company stood at 6.18 which reflect the varied functions that companies hire for and is an indication of continuity of our relationship with recruiters even in uncertain times.

The School follows an integrated system of Placements Process for its two campuses which is in line with its core tenet of ‘One-School Two Campuses’ philosophy.