Small-city B-schools find placements tough

“We spent over Rs 3.5 lakh for the management course. But have not got a placement. Its frustrating that we will now have to go to Mumbai, Delhi in search of jobs,” says Ravi Modi (name changed), a MBA student with a Gwalior institute.

He says only one in ten students of his batch has got placed.
This is not a one-off case. There are several institutes in smaller cities where students are struggling to get a placement.

Take the case of the Kousali Institute of Management Studies, located in picturesque Dharwad, about 425 km northwest of Bangalore. Only 20 of the 60 MBA students here have managed to get placed. The remaining are waiting in the wings, unsure about their fate on the jobs front.

The fate of engineering students at Moradabad Institute of Technology, 167 km southeast of New Delhi, is just as grim. Hari Om Agarwal, additional director at the institute, says only 20% of the 411 final year students have got placed till now. “Placements started in January. We are hopeful that by May about 60% will get placed.”

Likewise, only 12 of the 75 students from Aditya Engineering College in Beed, 450 kms from Mumbai, have got placed.
And for the lucky few who have got decent jobs, the average annual salaries are much lower than the astronomical packages earned by students from Tier I institutes.

R Ranganath, placement officer at SJC Institute of Technology, Chickballapur, 56 kms north of Bangalore, says hiring is picking up at a slow pace. “So far 140 of over 450 students have got placed. The average salaries offered by construction firms is about Rs 2.5 lakh, and by IT firms, it is Rs 3-3.2 lakh per year.”

There are 4,000 engineering institutes and approximately 1,600 business schools affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Barring the IITs, IIMs, and a few tier I institutes, the placement scenario in the rest is gloomy, with the schools finding it a Herculean task to place their students.

AH Chachadi from Kousali Institute says colleges have do a lot of groundwork by networking with recruiters to establish the credibility of the institutes and students. “Recruiters are not really aware of colleges in smaller towns; hence first we have to build a rapport with them.”

Chachadi says smaller institutes are hampered by the 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.”

The economic slowdown has compounded the problems for small-city institutes.

T Sreedhar, managing director of Hyderabad-based talent acquisition company TMI Network, says companies are in general still cautious on hiring. “There is uncertainty, hence companies are looking at hiring only the best.”

Rishi Das, co-founder and CEO of Bangalore-based talent acquisition firm CareerNet Consulting, says several companies are recruiting mostly in metros. “Thus students in non metros are disadvantaged.”