Ever wondered how some of the top B Schools of the country display steep growth year-on-year in the campus placement reports. Doesn’t it sound highly impressive and too good to be true ? Is it really as rosy as it is projected by the management institutes and their PR committees ?
Steady growth year after year. Even during this pandemic ?
With the world reeling over an unprecedented crisis, the global economy worldwide being at an all time low and layoffs at its peak, campus placements would face immense challenges this year, was a logical assumption.
Reports suggested over 10 million layoffs across sectors happened in India in the year 2020 due to the pandemic. Most sectors kept their recruitment plans on hold. A drop in overall placement performance, with no growth or negative growth in average salaries of the current batch, was something normal and was expected
On the contrary, what we witness is quite different.
Despite the market slowdown many B Schools were able to secure jobs to almost all students and thus rightfully claimed to have achieved the tag of “100% placements done”. Industry’s challenges were not much of a deterrent apparently as there were no negative impacts on the growth rate of the ‘Average CTC’ for many management institutes. Some B Schools even shared with great pride the international offers bagged by their students.
It sure is true for few, but for many there has been no substantial evidence beyond the claims which certainly raise one’s eyebrows.
On the other hand, some of the premiere business schools were seen releasing their placement reports which reflected a trend in sync with current business trends. Balanced, no tall claims to have achieved ‘phenomenal growth in average salary’.
What could be the basic difference between these two sets of B Schools which are considered to be in the same bandwidth with similar kinds of rankings and similar in various aspects considered and compared by students.
Are students missing out something while doing their research before selecting their dream management institute ?
While the placement statistics enable the colleges to run full blown PR campaigns for publicity, students need to go deep beyond what is being shown by some of the colleges. Check the data with existing students and alumni. Verify and validate the claims made by colleges.
How can one set of institutes display tremendous growth and the other set maintain a balanced but steady growth rate given the same set of conditions for both colleges – same market and similar companies, similar set of skills.
Is there a magic wand only with the one set of colleges ?
What is that “out of the box” thinking that one B School may have done and the other is missing out every year ?
The answer to this question is to get to see the placement reports in detail – the break up of salary, the variable pay, the fixed component, the past 3 to 4 years of placement data, the offers, profiles of companies, the alumni profiles, the recruiters’ profiles.
Check trends, verify form various sources. Dig deep then decide. There are many decent B Schools which display genuine data while there are some which come in glossy packaging and certain degree of skepticism.
