“IIMs see a rush of cos at lateral placements” 
IIM-A & IIM-C Bag 32 Foreign Placement 

IIM GRADS waiting for the big day in March when top employers will come hunting to their campus, can raise their stakes given the fact that many of their batchmates, who enjoy work experience, have already bagger a bigger number of foreign jobs and big pay-packers already.  At the two top IIMs, Ahmedabad and Calcutta, foreign posting in lateral placements (for students with work experience of 18-22 months) have jumped dramatically this year.  Students at IIM-A and IIM-C were offered a total of 32 foreign placements in countries like US, European Union, Hog Kong, Singapore and mid-East this year as against a total foreign placement of just five last year.  This demonstrates a growth of more than 600%.  More students are expected to get foreign placements as the laterals are not over as yet, said an IIM functionary. 

Additionally, the pay-cheque being offered this year is impressive too, with maximum salary offered for foreign placement being $80,000 per annum to a student of IIM-C.  The highest domestic salary so far in the lateral placement is Rs 14.5 lakh per annum, which went to an IIM-A graduate.  The laterals for any institute start much earlier than the finals since most of the placements are for middle and top management level and hence require longer duration.  The laterals are different from regular placements season as most of the graduates leverage their work-experience in getting better job profile and creamy postings,” said Shashank Khare, member of placement committee, IIM-A.

Even the number of companies that visited the two IIMs this year is expected to jump to 102 companies compared to just about 40 companies last year.  Apart from large number of companies, representation from different sector this year was spread out unlike last year when a majority of the companies was from the IT sector.  “This year, students had a number of options including consulting, finance, marketing, IT and ITeS, operations and human resources,” said Sanjeev Jha, member, placement committee, IIM-C.  Companies like Microsoft Corporation, Trilogy, HLL, Marakon Consultancy, IBM Mittal Steel, SAP international Consulting Group, Eurosuisse and Dubai Wire are all hiring Indians at middle and top management levels.  “We have students placed at top-management level as assistant vice –president, country managers and marketing heads,” said Mr. Khare.  This is in sharp contrast to last year’s performance during the laterals when the total number of acceptances were just 17 compared to total number of offers made, which was 51.