Demand for ISB students soars

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 3

The demand for students at the Indian School of Business in Mohali and Hyderabad has gone up this year.

Disclosing this here today, a senior ISB functionary said the ongoing placement process at the ISB in Mohali and Hyderabad had seen a significant increase in demand for talent from its flagship postgraduate programme in management. A large number of recruiters competed to hire talent from the two campuses, resulting in an all-time high number of offers at 1,093.

Even the Andhra Pradesh Government has offered to hire 11 students of the Indian School of Business, who will become Chief Minster’s fellows and help the state on several strategic initiatives, contributing to its ambition of emerging a major investment destination.

“The highlight of this year’s placements season at the ISB is the success of shifting from a purely structured system of previous years to a flexible hybrid model that also included exclusive days for recruiters who had elaborate hiring process,” she said.

With the highest number of job offers this year, the hybrid model of placements also resulted in higher pay packages to the 812-strong class of 2016.

Top consulting firms like McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, EY, Deloitte and KPMG continue to be big recruiters at the school, accounting for 19 per cent of the total offers. Firms like Microsoft, Apple, Philips, HCL, Tech Mahindra and Directi are also present in strength. E-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart also consolidated their presence and made offers to a total of 109 students.

This year, the quality of hiring improved as a total of 92 offers for senior leadership roles and global leadership programmes were made. These include several CXO-level positions. Axis Ban, which runs its women leadership programme at the ISB, has made 30 offers. Around 20 international companies have made 73 offers so far.

Interestingly, startups competed hard with established recruiters with seven per cent of the offers.

The lateral hiring process is spread over several months, giving both recruiters and students time to find their best fit.