XLRI Summer Placement Prog this year

XLRI Jamshedpur flooded with offers from foreign cos

Arindam Sinha

Jamshedpur, Nov 10 ‘Summer Placements 2006’ at premier B-school Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) here touched a new high when as many as nine overseas offers were made and accepted for the first time ever, indicating the changing perception of global companies towards Indian managerial talent.

The offers included Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) at Zurich, the niche division of ERP major SAP America, ICRM, the ICICI International Banking group at Hong Kong and TAS.

The B-School, which has been first among the major management institutions in the country to place 182 first-year students (comprising 122 business management and 60 personnel management & industrial relations students) for summer 2006, also witnessed the highest domestic stipend of Rs 40,000 per month being offered by SAP America followed by the Hay Group offer of Rs 32,000.

Following the trend at XLRI for some years now, consulting firms, including first-time recruiters like Deloitte Consulting, KPMG Consulting, SAP America and Watson Wyatt as well as regulars like Ernst & Young, Hay Group, Hewitt Associates and Mercer picked up as much as 17% of the batch. IBM (20), HLL (11), Deloitte Consulting (9), Cognizant (8), Aditya Birla Group (8) and ICICI Bank (8) were among the highest recruiters.

With new entrants like Google and Motorola picking up four each, the IT/technology sector accounted for 23% of the batch.

However, banking, finance and insurance sector companies ranked among students’ preferences with 34 offers accepted from CitiBank, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered and Edelweiss Capital among investment bankers. AIG, with six accepted offers, led the insurance sector.

The FMCG/manufacturing sector, which picked up around 26% of the students, saw regulars like Cadbury, Colgate Palmolive, GlaxoSmithKline, Godrej, HLL, ITC, Marico, P&G, Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser and Seagrams maintaining their faith in the B-School from previous experience.

“The placements have been the best ever on all counts: a significant increase in the portfolio of companies, number of companies visiting the campus for the first time, the diversity of the project profiles as well as the stipend offered,” said Prof Sabyasachi Sengupta, chairperson, placements, XLRI here on Thursday, adding that the “Nine foreign offers for summer internships and the active participation by top consulting firms augur well for the final placements of the senior batch.”

The recruiters included the Aditya Birla Group, Murugappa Group and TAS, with 16 students opting for them.