Why the placement chief at IIM-B is working overtime

This year too, like every year, 250 brightest-of-the-bright graduates from the B-school will head out into the world. For each consecutive batch, placements have peaked to a frenzy in the past years. The world8217;s biggest banks and corporations lined up to snag graduates. The salaries and perks rose by such astounding levels the highest reportedly close to Rs 1.5 crore per annum followed by much publicity, forcing the school to adopt a no-disclosure policy after students were rumored to receive extortion threats.

Mukherji has been chairman of the placement committee since 2006 and concedes to riding the crest of the recruitment wave. In this period, he has been witness to the phenomenon of Indian talent being discovered by the world. He has seen IIM-B graduates being offered salaries comparable to Harvard and Stanford B-school graduates. He has marked the demand within the country shoot up so much that even Indian corporations started offering dollar salaries and postings in London and New York.

As Mukherji saw, for students dreaming of the red Ferrari and the Manhattan penthouse, high-paying investment bank jobs held the most allure. The best students chose to work for investment banks or consulting firms. Last year, for instance, Lehman Brothers hired 11 IIM-B graduates, Deutsche Bank hired seven, Merrill Lynch six, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan five each. About 40 per cent of the graduating class was hired by these banks and financial consultancies.

This year, Mukherji discerns a difference. Nearly all companies have promised him they will show up at placement time but they are cautious. Mukherji senses that even if companies show up, 8220;I8217;m not sure what they will actually do after the song-and-dance.8221; He expects that the number of offers will fall dramatically. In recent years, a 100 companies have shown up at the final placement week and offered some 450 jobs. This year, Mukherji expects half the jobs to be on offer even if 100 companies roll up at the gates.

On the surface, nothing seems to have changed in the IIM-B campus. Students clad in rumpled jeans and open-toed sandals stride purposefully about the squeaky-clean corridors, the conference room is crammed with students peering into their laptops, and caterers are laying out the coffee and cookies for the participants of yet another post-lunch seminar.

Yet, even far-removed from the mayhem on Wall Street, the pain of the global financial meltdown is being acutely felt here. Ironically for Mukherji, the graduating class is competing with alumni who have been laid off on Wall Street and elsewhere who are also scouring the job market. The placement chairman says he is now doing more 8220;emotional counseling than career counseling8221;.

Those lining up for Mukherji8217;s sessions say they can barely get over the shock of waking up one morning to news that Lehman Brothers, a top employer at IIM-B, had filed for bankruptcy and that Merrill Lynch, another big recruiter, had been sold. Ever since, almost every student is signed up for Google alerts, is hooked on the 24-hour news cycle and devours business news. The tension soon turned into a betting game on which bank will go down next. One student from the graduating class confessed, 8220;It started getting a little less scary after the losers started buying treats at the cafe.8221;

For many, the glamour of Wall Street has worn off quickly. Nearly 50 students did their summer internships at investment banks this year but there is no word yet on pre-placement offers, total intake or salaries. Many of these interns confide that they have had a change of heart about the financial sector. 8220;I am not cut out for something that changes so much so soon, I want to explore other options,8221; said a student who wanted to remain anonymous.

Mukherji8217;s immediate worry is the summer internship placement week in which students in the junior year of the two-year course compete to win 12-week training stints at the biggest companies. This year, connections have been dug out using the business networking site Linked In, about a 1,000 companies have been contacted, and those from unconventional sectors such as lifestyle, media, infrastructure and even wine 038; spirit makers have been invited to the summer placement week.

Approaching the season, Mukherji says that the stress is so high and the eight-hour-a-day work so intense that it is all he can do to not fall back on his day job as associate professor of organisation and strategy. He wagers that he has the toughest job at IIM-B at the moment. 8220;Last year, all I did was shake hands,8221; he says, and adds, 8220;this year I will be a salesman8221;. This placement season will be a test for the prestigious institution and its talented students. For the 250 graduating students of IIM-B, the 300,000 students aspiring to get into IIMs this year, and the thousands more aiming to get into other top schools, the stakes are very high.