Thursday, January 26, 2012

• Placements will be held every weekend starting February 18
• New format to make the process more relaxed for students and companies

Bangalore: It's placement season at the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), but this year there's a twist. Unlike previous years, the placement process will be introduced in a brand new format, making that weeklong hullaballoo — both in and outside campus — over pay packets and job profiles a thing of the past. In this new avatar, the placements will be conducted over the weekends only, and will be spread out over a few months.

Starting February 18, weekends will see companies flock to the campus, conduct interviews and tests and pick the best talent suited to their profile. This process will take a break for a week or two in March, when final year examinations are on, and then will resume post-exams till entire batch of 350 is placed. Speaking to The Hindu , P.D. Jose, IIM-B professor in charge of final year placements, said the purpose of the new format is to make the process “more relaxed for students as well as participating companies”. “We were doing this over one week or so. But this was rather chaotic and high-pressure, and we had to pack in a lot of activity into a few days. Spreading it out over months will de-stress the process. That is the basic intention.” This is also partly because the number of students has grown in the past few years, after expansion post the implementation of the OBC quota.

Over the past three years the IIMs have been revamping their placement process. IIM-Ahmedabad, for instance, had shifted two years ago to a cohort-based process where it classified companies according to their profiles or the fields they deal with.

Prof. Jose explains that while this is a similar process, it is not cohort-based as companies are not going to be classified according to profiles. While earlier concepts of Slot Zero will not be carried on in this format, the companies will continue to be grouped according to students' preferences, he said.

While there is speculation about placements in MBA colleges, particularly because a large number of placements come from MNCs and companies overseas, Prof. Jose says that he is “optimistic”.