E-Paper
IIM-A changes its placement process
The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the country’s premier business school, is changing the way it places its students.
The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the country’s premier business school, is changing the way it places its students.
In a significant move, which could affect the way placements are carried out in other IIMs as well, the institute is shifting from day-based placements to a “cohort–based” system.
Companies across sectors will now be clubbed into cohorts or groups based on “similarity of roles” and each group will be called on a particular weekend, Saral Mukherjee, chairman of placements at IIM-A, said here on Wednesday.
Students will decide which cohorts should be invited when.
“Instead of segregation of firms, what we are doing now is segmentation of similar roles from different sectors,” Mukherjee told Hindustan Times.
“Now, companies will have to scout for the best talent within that cohort.” This means that salaries offered will no longer be the prime criteria for segmentation.
Till now placements were conducted for a continuous stretch divided into slots based on the status of the company, with big names given the coveted “Day 0” or first-day slot.
The new system was presented at a recruiters’ conclave in Mumbai on Tuesday, attended by representatives from more than 60 firms.
“Till now, we have only received positive feedback from the recruiters,” Saral Mukherjee said.
IIM-A said that the new placement system would “go live” from the coming placement season, which begins in the second week of February.
Though admitting that the new process would be much longer, the chairman of placements said it “allows more time and thus better understanding between the students and the recruiters”.
The earlier process led to “great pressure on firms to make offers early and on students to accept offers on the spot”, said Vivek Jain, the students’ representative on the placement committee.
“We believe the (new) process will ensure that decisions are not made hastily on either side.”
