India’s premier B-school Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has completed the final placement process for the class of 2018 of its coveted post-graduate programme (PGP) in management, with students being placed across more than 23 cohorts. More than 125 firms participated in the placement process with 150 different roles. Accenture Strategy made the most offers at the end of the process with 18 offers. Firms from multiple domains participated across the three clusters in the final placements, with students being placed across more than 23 cohorts. The placement process was conducted in two stages. The first was the laterals process where firms interviewed students with prior work experience and offered them mid-level managerial positions. More than 47 firms hired from diverse sectors such as technology, banking, consulting, general management and analytics. In the second stage of the final placement process, firms were grouped into cohorts based on the profile offered, and groups of cohorts were invited to campus across different clusters. As in previous years, students were provided the flexibility of making “dream” applications to firms of their choice in a subsequent cluster even with an offer in hand.

There were 176 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility and choice to build careers in sectors of their preference. Students also had the opportunity to work under the mentorship of the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad, on their entrepreneurial ideas. Firms which made the most offers on campus included Accenture Strategy, The Boston Consulting Group and Amazon. Accenture Strategy made the most offers at the end of the final placement process with 18 offers, followed by BCG and Amazon with 14 offers each. Among global banks, HSBC and JP Morgan were the largest recruiters, having picked five students each. In the sales and marketing domain, Airtel extended the most offers at eight, followed by HUL with five. With seven offers, TAS was the largest recruiter in the general management cohort. Microsoft extended eight offers, the highest in the enterprise tech cohort. In BFSI, American Express extended the most offers with eight, followed by Yes Bank and FinIQ with six offers each. In IT consulting, EXL extended the most offers with eight. This year, six students opted out of the placement process to work on their own ventures, under the guidance and mentorship of CIIE. Sandeep Murisetty, recruitment secretary at IIM, Ahmedabad, said, “The IIM-A placement process focuses on facilitating the best fit for students and recruiters rather than the quickest fit. This sets apart our unique cluster-cohort process from the day-system followed at other campuses. Keeping up with last year’s trend, we saw a significant rise in the number of students finding their dream job post their first job offer.”