MBA Placement 2006 - FMS

What does it take to be called a successful B-school: the possession of some core competencies that evolve over time or the capabilities of the current students that the institute attracts? What does it take to provide quality talent to recruiters, year after year?

For institutions like FMS, some of these questions have not really mattered. Because for year on year, the institute has been growing; both in capabilities and opportunities for students with the kind of jobs that they love to do. Summers 2006 were an expression of this same confidence; with students getting offers for varied roles and locations across India, Middle-East, South-East Asia and the rest.

In addition to the regular recruiters, 2006 saw the entry of bigwigs like Yahoo!, Reebok, Yes Bank, SAB Miller and MH AlShaya, which recruited for the first time from FMS. The growing visibility of the institute is reflected in companies like Yum Restaurants which chose FMS for recruitment, only the second campus in Asia visited by the company.

As many as 70 companies confirmed participation for the placement process with 32 of them being first-time recruiters at campus. The highest gross stipend offered was Rs 125,000 by Olam International. In dollar terms, the highest was $3000 by MH AlShaya for its Kuwait operations. In terms of Indian firms, highest was Rs 75,000 by Microsoft while SAP and Cognizant with Rs 60,000 summers stipend were close seconds.

FMS reputation as a finance bigwig shone across again with nearly 41% of the MBA batch getting a finance profile. Premier MNC Banks like HSBC, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Yes Bank, Bank of America, Standard Chartered, ICICI, UTI & Kotak reaffirmed their relationship with the campus. With 7 accepted offers, Standard Chartered got the maximum number of candidates while Yes Bank with 6 & HSBC with 5 came close seconds.

Niche & coveted Finance profiles were also offered by firms like Goldman Sachs, Barings Private Equity, Prudential, Acumen Funds & NCDEX which illustrate the choice available for the finance-inclined.

For the first time, FMCG majors too recognised the Finance talent at FMS with profiles in Finance being offered to students by HLL, P&G, SAB Miller, Coca Cola & Pepsi; in addition to their existing Sales & Marketing profiles.

While regular FMCG majors like HLL, P&G, ITC, Nestle, Colgate-Palmolive, GSK, Cadbury, Asian Paints, Dabur, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser, ICI Paints, Castrol & Blowplast have long since had a fruitful relationship with FMS, this year it was the newer companies on campus who offered stiff competition. New entrants SAB Miller, Heinz, Frito Lays, Yahoo, Red Bull, Bacardi & MTV provided newer and exciting opportunities for the next-generation marketer. Tata Motors also added to the excitement by offering its niche International Marketing Profile on campus.

It wasn’t just the marketing profiles that got offered; for the first time advertising made its impact on FMS placements with advertising majors like FCB Ulka, JWT & Leo Burnett confirming participation.

Overall, 39% of the batch decided to test their marketing acumen in summers.

With a booming industry sector, huge stipends & multiple profiles on offer, IT companies made a collective pitch for the MBA students. Major firms like Microsoft, Cognizant, SAP, HP, IBM, Flextronics & Wipro offered attractive choices for the students.

The trend of companies picking up higher numbers from FMS for General Management & Consulting arena continued this year with Tata Administrative Services (TAS), a favorite across B-school campuses in India making 5 offers, out of which two are international. Others in the consulting domain included Avalon Consulting, Mindtree Consulting, IBM & Yahoo.

A new entrant in summers this year was Human Resources (HR) profile; an area that was not on the FMS radar during the Summer Placements last year. With HR profiles being offered by premier companies like Hewitt Associates, SAB Miller & Coca Cola, the size of the pie available for students has only increased.

Puru Gupta, the Placement Secretary for MBA, FMS Delhi, says, “Not only have the number of profiles offered per company increased, but also the number of offers made has gone up exponentially; reinforcing the fact that FMSites demonstrate high competence across all functions & specializations.”

Total companies confirming participation 70

Total companies participated (till 100% placements) 54

Total no. of new accounts (participated) 32

No. of companies with multiple profiles 20

Maximum Gross Stipend Offered (International) USD 3000

Maximum Gross Stipend Offered (Domestic) INR 125,000

MBA (Management of Services)

The new fulltime programme of MBA (Management of Services) at FMS that was introduced in its Golden Jubilee year 2004 also set new standards of excellence by attracting leading companies across the ever challenging service sector. This programme too witnessed tremendous participation from diverse sectors with Consulting, IT and ITES, Financial Services and KPO/BPO companies vying with each other to search out the best students. The interest shown by various companies across different sectors once again reinforced the credentials of thought-leadership of FMS. This FMS programme with a small batch size of 40 has also become recruiters’ delight owing to its distinctive curriculum and unique course structure.

4 students signed out with a division of SAP, the ERP major, which offered the highest domestic stipend of Rs 80,000 gross, followed by Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) that also offered a very healthy stipend. Overall, the batch witnessed excellent summer placements as the students got their choice of sectors.

In MBA (MS) programme too the Financial Services led the pack of recruiters as the highest number of offers (34% of the entire batch) was made in this sector. The major recruiters included Goldman Sachs, Yes Bank, ICICI Prudential, NCDEX, GE Money, Aviva Life Insurance, UTI Bank, Prudential PLC

Other Corporate Stalwarts that came to the campus with attractive profiles included HLL, DCM Shriram, Essar Group and RPG CEAT division.

The leading recruiters in the IT/ITES Sector were SAP, CTS, HP and Wipro which was opted by 30% of the batch. Whereas, Consulting attracted recruiters like IBM, Mind-Tree and Avalon which was preferred by as much as 23% of the batch.

Highlighting the USP of the course, the leading recruiters from other unconventional sectors were Kingfisher Airlines, Hindustan Times and Grail Research.

Chetna Agarwal, who was picked up by Goldman Sachs said, “I am thrilled to get an opportunity as an Intern for Equity Research Division of Goldman Sachs. The Equity Markets domain has always interested me and this seems to be a great opening for me to look forward to a rewarding career in finance.”

According to Nand Kishore Panda, who chose to undertake his summer training in SAP, “The MBA (MS) programme has given me an opportunity to understand the varied needs of the service sector in a better manner. With my experience in Vedanta Resources Plc, and a strong backing of this course, I am extremely optimistic about obtaining placements in the company of my choice”.

Commenting on the recently concluded summer placements of FMS, Prof J.K. Mitra, the current Dean of FMS says, “We have got a very positive feedback about the quality of the students. I am confident that each of our students will do a very good job and delight the recruiter. With nearly 20% of the 2007 batches already having PPOs & PPIs, the stage is set for both the MBA and MBA (MS) batches of 2007 to outshine their peers in the corporate world”.