Robust offers by top recruiters across sectors

Major firms are going all out to rope in young MBA grads

Based on the response from B-schools and recruiters, pre-placements are as important as final placements. Recruiters are clear about what they want from their ideal candidate.


For instance, at KPMG, one would find an environment that provides challenging work and recognises and rewards high performance. “Students from the same league of B-schools and engineering colleges typically have comparable technical competencies. When we hire from such campuses, we do not simply look for people who are ‘technically’ the brightest. Our approach involves evaluating candidates on a much broader set of competencies such as business orientation, integrity and values, drive and resilience, accountability and professionalism. This way, we get people who are much more receptive to our culture and work ethics,” says Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head-education, KPMG in India.

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KPMG has been to a number of top tier B-schools so far and has recruited approximately 100 people for final placements and summer internship opportunities. “Through a number of campus engagement initiatives, such as the KPMG International Case Competition (KICC), we are also building our connect with some of the brightest MBA students in the country. KICC is a five-day global event in which students from over 24 countries would compete in Brazil next year in April. The contest has just been launched in 10 prominent MBA institutes in India,” he adds.

Bharti Airtel has also introduced a unique competition-based campus recruitment practice called iCreate that gives an opportunity to students to work on real life business cases and directly interact with the function heads at Airtel.

Covering the top 15 business colleges across the country, this year the competition received over 350 entries. The winning team is also awarded a pre-placement interview offer which gives them a chance to join Airtel to innovate and develop and realise their business ideas.

Insurance major Tata AIG looks for the right “attitude” in its potential employees. “In 2012-13, we have hired 62 candidates across MBA and engineering schools which would be about a 12% jump over last year,” says Subramanian Suryanarayanan, national head HR, TATA AIG General Insurance.

We are building our connect with MBA students in the country Through campus engagement initiatives ----Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head-education, KPMG in India