XLRI Final Placements conclude with a bang

The Placement season for the batch of 2008 ended on an exceptional note, with the batch of 180 students placing themselves in the crème de la crème of corporate responsibilities across the domain of business expertise. A notable feature of the entire process was not just the increased leeway for the average student to choose, but also depth of specific roles that were tailored to woo the best of the country’s business graduates. 298 offers were made for a batch of 180 students, with the average domestic offer coming in at 14.75 Lacs and the highest domestic offer being Rs. 28 Lacs. 12 international offers were also made with an average of $90,000 USD.

The first time recruiters included the likes of JM Financial, Barclays, Kotak, 8 Capital Hedge Fund, Centrum, Aptivaa among others. 8 Capital Hedge Fund recruited exclusively from XLRI while P&G for the first time offered branding roles for XLRI students.

31% of the offers were made in the Finance domain, in Private Equity, Hedge Funds Investment Banking, Treasury, Commercial Banking, Relationship Management, Trading, Mergers and Acquisition Advisory, and Human Relations, among others. A plethora of multinational and domestic giants such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, JM Financial, HSBC, Citibank, Barclays, Deutsche Equities, Standard Chartered, 8 Capital Hedge Fund, ICICI Bank, ICRA, Kotak and Centrum were among the first to recognize the ever-increasing stature of XLRI in the Financial Domain. The quality of candidates was impressive enough for the recruiters to offer treasury roles at their offices in London, Toronto, and Bahrain.

Consulting roles offered on campus followed the same pattern. McKinsey, Accenture, The Hay Group, Ernst and Young, KPMG, Mercer, PWC, Hewitt Associates, Deloitte, Aptivaa were some of the Global players who contributed to the added portfolio of consulting options that the typical student found in her consideration set. 21% of the students accepted these offers which were spread across verticals – Strategy, Banking and Financial Services, Human Resources, Risk Management, among others.

Keeping in tradition with its image of a veritable powerhouse of marketing and sales talent, XLRI was the hub of the best of the Global FMCG majors vying for a share of the marketing interest in the batch. Procter and Gamble, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Johnson and Johnson, Colgate Palmolive, Nestle, Cadbury, Asian Paints, Reckitt Benckiser, Marico, Glaxo Smithkline, ITC, Pepsi, were some of the recruiters to reinforce their traditional relationships with the campus and 23% of the students accepted offers in this domain. Along with the traditional sales positions, branding and marketing roles (with international locations) were the new positions that the same recruiters offered. Notably, Global Sales and Strategy were offered as lateral entry positions by IT majors like Infosys and HCL Technologies – a paradigm shift from the traditional breadth of branding on campus.

General Management was the new flavour of a placement season that saw renewed interest in taking up dynamic responsibilities across a spectrum of verticals. TAS, Al Ghanim, The Aditya Birla Group, The Hinduja Group, Essar, The Murugappa Group, offered both national and international roles with compensation packages that reflected the gravity of responsibility thrust on the new recruits. 14% of the batch snapped up offers in this arena

Microsoft, HCL, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and others lead the Technology Sector that offered lateral roles for students with previous experience in handling Information Services. 11% of the batch took to these offers.

With the students leaving such footprints, Professor Uday Damodaran, the Chairperson of the Placement Committee said, “There is nothing more gratifying than seeing an entire batch of graduating students being rewarded for their two-year study with career starts in exactly the sort of roles they aspired for. This year, yet again, we at XLRI are happy that we have been able to provide each student with a dream start to his/her career. The quality and diversity of roles that were on offer this year surpassed all previous standards that we had set for ourselves”.