Salaries hit roof again, but foreign postings decrease  ( March '7,2001, ET)

THE HIGHEST salary offered in the campus placement sweepstakes has now jumped up to a whopping $225,000 (that’s well over Rs 1 crore), including benefits. No prices for guessing which campus has got the honour? Yes, it is IIM, Ahmedabad. And the enviable offer has been made to five IIMA students by Lehman brothers, an investment bank.

Apart from the moolah, there was plenty of other interesting stuff happening on campus. The highest Indian salary, for instance, showed no significant increase over last year’s highest. But don’t be misled, it’s not because there was a dearth of offers going around. In fact, Indocean Chase Capital, the venture capital firm that set a record of sorts last year by offering the highest Indian salary, had to go back empty handed this time.

“For most students, the profile of the job was higher on the list of priorities than remuneration,” Rahul Mehta, an IIMA student said. Take Mayank Chowdhary, who turned down a very enticing offer at the London office of Lehman Brothers. Mayank, has opted to work at the International Finance Corporation in Delhi. The reason: “Working at IFC would give me the opportunity to work for society,” he says. Another student, Nikhil Sahani cut through a pile of options before settling for the Bennett, Coleman & Co — the publishers of The Economic Times and The Times of India — says that for him the attraction was the challenge of doing something different. Of course, there were quite a few who opted for the perennial favourite on B-school campuses — consulting. Saurabh Zindal, who chose KPMG over ABN Amro and ICICI, said: “It was either IT consulting or strategic consulting for me.”

He is probably reflecting the sentiments of a majority of his batchmates. The biggest recruiter on the campus, i2 Technologies, hired 18 students. Subhradeeto Mohanty, who will be working at company’s the Dallas office is thrilled with the prospect of working at one of the largest technology firms in the world. And so is Vivek Sahay who’s got a dream offer from Lehman Brothers. On the flip side, there has been a drop in the number of international offers this time.

This year 78 offers were made for foreign placements and only 67 of them were accepted. In percentage terms, that is a ten per cent drop from last year’s 41 per cent. The IIMA Y2K batch saw 115 offers for placements abroad come their way. This confirms speculations that the economic slowdown in the West has made a significant dent on the international recruitments on Indian campuses. However, the overall statistics are encouraging though. The total average compensation of all salaries jumped to Rs 18 lakh, an increase of 13 per cent over last year’s 16 lakh.

The average Indian compensation went up by 10 per cent to 7 lakh, whereas the average foreign compensation went up by 15 per cent to a cool $92,444 (more than Rs 42 lakh). McKinsey made the highest Indian offer of Rs 12 lakh to eight students.

The placements, which were done in a record three days time, were a runaway success. Some of the recruiters that ET spoke to said that they were happy with the recruitments. Dr Janmejaya Sinha, director, Boston Consulting Group, said: “We find the applicant pool at the IIMs very strong and we are gratified with the fact that our practice has recruited from all these campuses.” The consultancy had made a total of 12 offers, of which 10 were accepted. HSBC, which has made 10 offers on the IIMA campus including five for its London office, has had a good recruitment season.