Career in Management: Demand for tech-savvy managers continue

Pandemic slowdown may have cast the sceptre of uncertainty on the future of freshers, but if the placement figures of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are anything to go by, the prospects for future managers have never been better. Many of the B-schools have recorded 100% placements this year despite the health crisis because management education gets valued more in difficult times, says Abhishek Goel, professor and chairperson of the Career Development and Placement Office, IIM Calcutta. “Pandemic has forced the companies to increase efficiency levels which increases demands of management thinking and skills. Several businesses are restructuring, which has increased the demand for fresh talent from top management institutes,” he adds.

IIM Calcutta’s 100% placements this year saw increased demands in business consulting, IT and product management related roles with nearly 60% of the outgoing students opting for them. A total of 172 firms participated in the final placement process where the average and median salaries rose to Rs 29 Lakh and Rs 27 Lakh respectively. Major software services and e-commerce platforms boosted their hiring from the institute’s campus as brands including Microsoft, Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm etc recruited 24% (111 students) of the batch for various product management and fintech roles.

Professor Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode, says his institute took on the pandemic challenge head-on with the assumption that this is a ‘golden crisis’. “We had foreseen long before that geographical and physical barriers in education can only be bridged by technology. It is that experimentation that gave us the confidence as we planned to take on the challenges of the upsetting of a well synchronised academic calendar, and the aspects of safety and social distancing norms. The success of our summer and final placements is a testimony to the resilience and competence of our students, alumni, faculty and administration.”

IIM Kozhikode witnessed 100% placements with offers rolled out by 137 recruiters, a 4.6% increase as compared to last year. The mean salary stands at Rs 22.5 lakh/annum while the median salary is at Rs 20 lakh/annum. While 32.7% of the offers were rolled out by the consulting cluster this season, which is a 12.5% increase from last year, some of the long-term collaborative recruiters in this domain that participated were Accenture Strategy, Cognizant Business Consulting, Deloitte to mention a few. This year, 21.5% of the offers were made in the financial sector, with the majority of the offers being secured from reputed financial institutions including Axis Bank, Bank of America, Citi Bank, Deutsche Bank etc.

Reflecting upon the role of new-age managers in a fast-changing world, Chatterjee says, “The new attitude that generation Z will bring to the enterprise will shift business thinking from consuming to caring. The new generation of managers will benefit immensely from professional attitudes shifting from the egocentric managerial world towards a more eco-centric, purposeful business. They have to be pillars supporting organisational leadership, not caterpillars eating away the vitality of the enterprise.”

Among the newer entities, IIM Udaipur is fairly upbeat about its placement prospects “since the quality of recruiters and job roles have gone up ever since the institution focussed on building stronger industry relationships”, says Janat Shah, director, IIM Udaipur, that has implemented a ‘rolling horizon’ placement strategy extending from November 2020 till the institute’s convocation in April 2021.

The demand for jobs in consulting companies, e-commerce and technology (including IT) are on a rise at the campus, followed by decent recruitments in banking and finance, specially fintech. “Manufacturing and the FMCG sector witnessed marginal decline while international placements have dried up post covid as against the institute’s good presence in Dubai (around 5% placements) in previous years,” Shah adds.

“We have had a few offers revoked by the recruiters for our 2018-2020 batch, but our efforts have helped students find some good opportunities to settle in. Since we have forged a strong bond with our corporate partners, having an offer revoked is a rare occurrence,” he says. The Institute focussed on digital transformation in the pre-COVID phase with a one-year MBA Digital Enterprise Management programme to groom tech-savvy managers. Compulsory courses on Digital Marketing, Digital Technology and Business Analytics have also been introduced in its 1-year MBA keeping in view the emerging job market.