New Delhi: Sure you can get your MBA (master’s in business administration) next year, but will there be a job waiting for you at the end of the programme?
From students to professors to—most importantly—those in positions of hiring, almost everyone agrees that the placement season on campuses this year will be very different from that in the past. But, they say, there is no reason to panic—yet.
Weighing options: Students on the campus of Delhi University’s Faculty of Management Studies. Recruiters, professors and students agree that the placement season on campuses this year will be very different. Ramesh Pathania / Mint
Notes 25-year-old Neha Rastogi, a final-year MBA student specializing in finance and a member of the placement cell at the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) in Delhi, the global slowdown is definitely showing an impact on the hiring plans of companies, mainly investment banks.
Banking is the largest employment sector for graduates in the Mint C-fore survey.
“The challenge is a lot more in terms of finding a good job this year,” says Rastogi, who is banking on her work experience of 18 months with the risk management team at Credit Suisse, Singapore, to land her dream job.
Like most of her batchmates in the finance stream, Rastogi, too, is looking at casting a wider net to get the best bet. “Our earlier batches focused heavily on investment banking but, given the present scenario, we are looking at other financial players such as private equity (PE), venture capital (VC) firms and banking services companies, which are showing great potential,” she says.
Like Rastogi, Anubhav Goyal, a student of postgraduate programme in management at the Indian School of Business (ISB), and his classmates are also showing an increasing preference for PE, VC firms and banking services companies.
“As a student body, we are trying and reaching out to as many companies as we can in the PE and VC space,” says Goyal, an engineering graduate majoring in finance at the Hyderabad-based business school.
ISB, for instance, organized a PE conference on 6 September to bring together recruiters and students on one platform. Students are also considering similar roles in other sectors to increase their chances of landing the right job. For those specializing in finance, for instance, the financial services sector remains the first choice. “They are, however, looking at financial roles in other sectors as the next best bet,” says Ashish Handa, students’ director for the placement committee for the class of 2009, ISB.
Though one can see some amount of restraint in buoyancy regarding placements this year, recruiting coordinators across business schools say they don’t expect the slowing global economy to have an impact on campus hiring.