8 students opt out of IIM-B placement

Bangalore: The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), kick-started its first day of final placements on Thursday, amid higAbout eight second-year post- graduate programme (PGP) students have opted out of the final placement.

“This year, there are seven to eight students who will not take part in the final placements,” an IIM-B official said. “We will know the details of what they intend to do after the conclusion of the placement process,” the official said.

In 2009, seven PGP students had withdrawn from the final placements to start their entrepreneurial ventures; there were four such students in 2008.

About 100 companies are participating in this year’s final placements. The usual suspects are expected on day zero, when students are picked by Wall Street investment banks.

Lateral placements recently concluded at the IIM-B campus, with 75 offers being made by 30 companies. Some of the companies that participated in the lateral placements were from the healthcare, IT, finance and manufacturing sectors.

The PGP batch getting ready for placements has 266 students — 88% are engineering graduates, 6% are from commerce background, 3% are science graduates and 3% are from other categories. The average work experience of students in this batch is about 22 months.

Unlike last year’s recession-hit final placements, which dragged on for a while, this year the process is expected to conclude in a week’s time. In 2009, 97 companies had participated in the final placements, compared to 62 in 2008.

In 2009, day zero was also affected, with only 64 students getting placed; in 2008, 103 students of a batch of 256 got job offers on day zero.

There had been much talk at IIM-B about changing the placement procedure after last year’s poor show. While IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has tweaked its placement process, making it lengthier, IIM-B retained the day zero concept this year. Last year, public sector undertakings (PSUs) were the flavour of the placement season, as students had lapped up offers from firms like HPCL, NTPC and the Oriental Bank of Commerce.h anticipation among students and a renewed sense of well-being post recession.