Placements grim at smaller B-schools

Every time she hears or reads about job surveys that proclaim that hiring numbers are ascending month on month and that the job market is back on track, Anju Mantri gets agitated.

The surveys add to the frustration of the 24-year old Mumbai resident who passed out from a city-based MBA institute a few months back. She has not been able to find a job even though India Inc is said to be back on track as far as recruitments are concerned.

Mantri says very few companies came for placements at her MBA institute and just a handful got picked up. “For the rest of us, it’s a mass rush to job portals or circumnavigating offices of job consultants,” she says.

Sailing in the same boat is Vishal Sharma from Pune. The 27-year-old MBA graduate says there were 30-40% fewer firms approaching his institute this year, compared with previous years.

And the minuscule number of companies that come to the campus take only the toppers. “The average and above-average students are left to fend for themselves. And scouting by ourselves is not easy as firms say they have no vacancies at the moment,” he says.

Sharma and Mantri’s stories are just the tip of the ice berg. Thousands of MBA graduates across India are struggling to secure jobs, putting claims of a revival in the job market under cloud.

India has approximately 1600 business schools affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education. Industry experts say barring the IIMs and a few other renowned business schools, at least 40-45% students in the other institutes are yet to get jobs.

“The job scene might have improved over, say, last year. But the situation now is very different from 2006-07, where companies would just rush and grab people whether or not they fitted the requirements,” says T Sreedhar, managing director, of Hyderabad-based talent management and talent acquisition company, TMI Network.

There is also the issue of productivity, claim job consultants. “Companies are open only for those graduates who they think can deliver results quickly. The expectation benchmarks have risen. Companies are not keen on hiring students from institutes they are not familiar with,” says Sreedhar.

AH Chachadi from Kousali Institute of Management Studies in Karnataka says talent at smaller institutes is affected by a dearth of quality faculty. “Institutes are growing rapidly. However, faculty with a good academic and industry experience is hard to find.

This affects output, and the faith of recruiters is shaken.”
Moreover, says Chachadi, colleges have to do a lot of groundwork by networking with recruiters to establish credibility of the institutes and students.

With MBA graduates expecting high six-figure salaries and fancy job profiles, given the hype over the course, the situation gets worse, says Kris Lakshmikanth, founder CEO and managing director, of Bangalore-based search firm HeadHunters India. “95% students think that MBA is the ultimate gateway for a dream job. Hence they are not ready to settle with something that does not match their expectations,” he says.

Sharma says that, of the few offers that were made at his institute, a good percentage offered annual packages of Rs 1.5 lakh, way below students’ expectations.   

Lakshmikanth’s advice to students is, “They should realise that times are still not great and should take up whatever comes their way”.