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Technology, consulting firms top recruiters at ISB

So far, 421 companies have taken part in ISB’s 2013 placement season, an increase of 21% over last year

A file photo of the ISB campus. Recruitments by banking, financial services and insurance companies revived this year with several leading banks and financial institutions making 75 offers on campus. Photo: Mint
A file photo of the ISB campus. Recruitments by banking, financial services and insurance companies revived this year with several leading banks and financial institutions making 75 offers on campus. Photo: Mint

The Indian School of Business (ISB) on Friday said a significantly higher number of companies participated in student hirings at its Hyderabad and Mohali campuses this placement season, led by technology and consulting firms.
ISB’s 2013 placement season began in December and will end next month. So far, 421 companies have taken part, an increase of 21% over last year, offering 798 jobs, up 27%, to students of the school’s flagship post graduate programme in management.
ISB said the annual average salary offered to the 2013 batch students was similar to last year. The average annual salary for the middle 80% of the 2012 batch wasRs.18.83 lakh. ISB refused to reveal the highest salary offered in the latest season.
Demand for ISB students rose despite slowing economic growth, which is estimated by the government to have slumped to a decade’s low of 5% in the year ended 31 March, showing that graduates of top business schools are prized by recruiters. But tier-II and tier-III institutes are still struggling to find jobs for their graduates.
“Across the board it is not such a hunky-dory situation,” said Sangeeta Lala, senior vice-president and head of sourcing at Teamlease Services Pvt. Ltd, a recruitment firm. “Placement officers of tier-II business schools are coming back to recruiting firms like us and are asking us to bring our clients to (their) campus, or are sharing student database with us to place their students.”
ISB graduates have higher pay packets than the industry as students enter the school with relatively more experience. As a result, the average pay packet for the top 10% of the class is Rs.15-18 lakh, compared with Rs.8-12 lakh for other tier-I business schools, Lala said.
“In an economy which is not doing well, companies may not recruit in large numbers but will go after high level of talent. Our model is different, the experience level of our batch is 5 years on average, and the range of experience is between 2 years to about 20 years. This opens up a range of roles and functions across the industry,” said V.K. Menon, senior director of admissions and placements at ISB.
Of the 762 students in the 2013 batch of ISB, 21 opted out of the placement process to start their own ventures, return to their companies or join their family businesses, ISB said. So far, 72 students have got international placements.
Technology and consulting firms emerged the biggest hirers, contributing nearly two-thirds of the job offers.
Around 300 offers, or 38%, came from 53 technology companies including Apple Inc, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, Facebook Inc, Google Inc, HCL Technologies Ltd, Hewlett-Packard Co.,International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Wipro Ltd.
About 30 consulting firms including AT Kearney Inc., Accenture Plc, Booz and Co., Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd, Ernst and Young, KPMG, McKinsey and Co. Inc and PwC made 163 job offers.
Hiring by banking, financial services and insurance companies revived, ISB said, with several leading banks and financial institutions making 75 offers on campus. Companies included Citibank NA, Delta Partners FZ-Llc, Goldman Sachs group Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, ICICI Bank Ltd, Standard Chartered Plc,UBS AG and Yes Bank Ltd.
Consulting and sales and marketing emerged as the two most-preferred functional areas for ISB graduates, attracting nearly 50% of the total students.
The 2013 batch size of ISB increased 45% from 528 students last year due to the addition of the campus in Mohali.
“Both campuses needed to be integrated in making sure that the recruiters had access to the students of both the campuses, as well as students had access to all recruiters that came to ISB,” said Deepak Chandra, deputy dean at ISB. “The integrated approach helped us reaching out to large number of recruiters.”

Tech M tweaks management structure, picks two ‘young CEOs’

Move part of firm’s initiative to identify 30 segment leaders who can help it reach its $5 bn revenue goal by 2015

The young CEOs are being selected through a process that involves nominations received from senior leaders, one-on-one interviews and final validation by their business group heads. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
The young CEOs are being selected through a process that involves nominations received from senior leaders, one-on-one interviews and final validation by their business group heads. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
Tech Mahindra Ltd, India’s sixth largest software services exporter, has begun to put a new management layer in place by picking two segment leaders, or so-called “Young CEOs”, to drive growth at the company that’s preparing to merge with its unit Mahindra Satyam.
While Rahul Bhuman will focus on strategic initiatives in the area of education and finance, Raghav Kumeria will head a team for a new business initiative by launching a platform to provide remote technical support services for telecom companies and Internet service providers (ISPs).
Kumeria joined Tech Mahindra in November 2006 and was senior manager, platform services, while Bhuman was head of the smart grid competencies division at Mahindra Satyam. Both are yet to be assigned their new titles.
In their early 30s, Kumeria and Bhuman have been picked as part of an initiative by Tech Mahindra to identify 30 segment leaders who can help the company, which is combining with Mahindra Satyam (the rebranded Satyam Computer Services Ltd), achieve its $5 billion revenue target by 2015, as Mintreported on 15 February. The two earned combined revenue of $2.5 billion in the nine months ended December.
The move reflects Tech Mahindra’s efforts to convince customers of its scale as it competes with bigger software services providers such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd, analysts said.
Tech Mahindra, which bought Hyderabad-based Satyam in an April 2009 auction after the company fell into a crisis following an accounting scandal, is awaiting the Andhra Pradesh high court’s approval to proceed with the merger.
Harshvendra Soin, vice-president of human resource at Mahindra Satyam, said in an interview on Monday that the “Young CEO” programme was not linked to the merger process.
“It is an initiative taken by the HR department to promote young talent. It is an ongoing programme kick-started now (April).” He added that the company hopes to identify at least five more Young CEOs by the end of 2012.
The young CEOs are being selected through a process that involves nominations received from senior leaders, one-on-one interviews and final validation by their business group heads, Soin said.
They are being drawn from the 80,000-odd employees of Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam.
The young CEOs, said Soin, will focus on five key growth areas—mergers and acquisitions, new business initiatives, partnerships, joint ventures and new geographies, while core operations will be carried out in the existing structure comprising internal business groups (IBG) and geography heads. They are also expected to develop capabilities in new technologies like mobility.
Each “Young CEO” will be given own teams for sales, delivery and domain support, access to finance and human resources and can seek top management intervention directly, said Soin, adding, “the returns can be quantified only after a year or so”.
“We will partner with our existing telecom clients in a white label shared services model, to enable them monetize cost or/and open up a new revenue stream in a natural area of adjacency. We will be light on partner side investments and high on returns” said Kumeria.
He added: “To reach $5 billion in revenue by 2015, we have isolated a couple of initiatives which are going to be in the market for tomorrow. If we move in now, we will receive significant traction.”
While the programme has been conceived and is being overseen by Tech Mahindra managing directorC.P. Gurnani, it is being mentored by Sujit Baksi, president–corporate affairs and business services group.
Tech Mahindra’s legal merger with Mahindra Satyam has been pushed back by six months up to 30 September, according to a filing by the company to BSE on 25 March. The Andhra Pradesh high court is currently hearing a plea by retail investors who have opposed the proposed share swap ratio of 2:17 (two shares of Tech Mahindra for 17 shares of Mahindra Satyam) for the merger.
“The high court order pertains to the legal merger. Operationally, they started working in cohesion within two years of the Satyam acquisition. Since then, they have been trying to integrate the two companies ambitiously,” said Alok Shende, founder and director of information technology (IT) research and consulting firm Ascentius Consulting.
Tech Mahindra earns almost all its revenue from the telecom sector. After the legal merger with Mahindra Satyam, analysts expect the contribution of telecom to combined revenue to decline to at least 50% because of Mahindra Satyam’s presence in other verticals such as banking, financial services, insurance and healthcare.
Dhirendra Tiwari, head of research at Antique Stock Broking Ltd, said a decline in revenue from the UK-based telecom company BT Group Plc. was a concern for the firm.
“Their issues with the declining telecom business will get offset by other growth drivers and diversification will help accelerate their growth. Then 13% revenue growth will be sustainable,” he added.
BT is Tech Mahindra’s top client, contributing 29% to the company’s dollar revenue of $329 million in the third quarter ended 31 December, compared with 33% in the preceding quarter and 35% in the same quarter in the previous year.
Shares of Tech Mahindra declined 1.1% to Rs.924.70 on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex edged up 0.05% to 19,179.36 points.

EPFO may revive bid to club all allowances with basic pay

Move will result in employers contributing more to EPF accounts of employees, increase staffing costs
Prashant K. Nanda Mail Me
EPFO manages a retirement corpus in excess of `4 trillion contributed by some 80 million accounts. Photo: Ramesh Pathania
Some 40 million employees may take home less pay but save more in their retirement fund as the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) seeks to revive a contentious move to tweak the salary threshold for monthly deductions.
A committee set up by the labour ministry has favoured clubbing a majority of salary components with basic pay to calculate the amount deductible for contribution to the employees’ provident fund (EPF).
Such a move will result in employers contributing more to the EPF accounts of their personnel, resulting in an increase in their staffing expenses. Employees now have 12% of basic pay deducted as their provident fund contribution, which employers are required to match.
In an order dated 30 November signed by then central provident fund commissioner R.C. Mishra, the government-run retirement fund manager said: “All allowances which are ordinarily, necessarily and uniformly paid to the employees are to be treated as part of the basic wage.”
In other words, all payments except house rent allowance (HRA), over-time, bonuses and commissions are to be considered part of basic pay. The order was put on hold later and the committee, with representatives of the labour ministry, employers and employees, was formed to review it.
“We are going to revive it,” said Anil Swarup, central provident fund commissioner. He said that what “should have been done, will be done” and blamed the media for “almost killing the circular” issued in November.
Swarup spoke at a conference on provident fund organized by industry lobby PHD (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday.
Two members of the committee who spoke on condition of anonymity said two contentions in the November order—the salary components and a move to curb the power of employees’ provident fund inspectors in investigating PF defaults by employers—had been approved by the panel. The committee submitted its report on Wednesday.
“Some companies misinterpret the salary and split it on several heads to avoid their contribution. This circular only tries to clarify what constitutes salary and (is) in sync with the EPF Act 1952,” said one of the two persons.
“There is unanimity that a larger contribution to retirement corpus would be beneficial for workers. As such, the contribution is completely tax exempt and risk-free,” the official said.
The second person said curbs on open-ended assessment enquiries and setting a seven-year limit for probing cases of provident fund fraud by companies will make the procedure more practical.
“It has been observed that open-ended assessment enquiries and investigations serve no real purpose. Moreover, such enquiries often do not result in identification of beneficiaries and only tend to harass employers and establishments. It is accordingly directed that no enquiry or investigation shall ordinarily go beyond seven years, i.e., it shall cover the period of default not exceeding preceding seven financial years,” said the November circular.
EPFO manages a retirement corpus in excess of Rs.4 trillion contributed by some 80 million account holders. Half of them are active.
Ravi Wig, a member of the central board of trustees, the highest decision-making body of the EPFO, said there had been frequent complaints of inspectors of the retirement fund trying to extort personal benefits by threatening employers.
“When EPFO is going for transparency and online submission and withdrawal of money, where is the question of widespread fraud now? Now an employee can see his contribution online and once the permanent account number is in place, the system will become more robust,” said Wig, chairman of Wig Brothers India Pvt. Ltd, a construction firm and representative of employers.
According to an EPFO official, the panel’s report was to reach the labour ministry by Thursday evening. Labour secretary Mrutyunjay Sarangi said he was “yet to see the report”.
Swarup said the EPFO will focus more on making procedures transparent and user-friendly.
From July, employees having more than one account will be able to have their savings in old accounts transferred to their new account within four weeks; there is no set time-frame for such transfers. Currently, while shifting a job, an employee ends up creating new accounts rather than carrying forward an old account as the transfer of a PF account is considered tedious and time-taking.
Even the withdrawal application will be made online to reduce the physical interface between EPFO offices and workers.
“Once the processes are clean, you will have less complaints,” Swarup said.

1 in 20 Indian tech grads considered ‘world class’

Summary: The quality of India’s private sector education system is being questioned in a study by Knowledgefaber, which found only a minority of India’s yearly batch of over 350,000 engineering and IT grads are fit to join MNCs.

Half of India’s 356,000 engineering and technology graduates last year failed to find gainful employment and less than five percent were deemed suitable to work at multinationals such as Google, according to a study.

In an interview with ZDNet, Amit Goel, CEO of Bangalore-based technology consultancy firm Knowledgefaber, discussed the findings of his company’s report ”Fresh talent pool landscape in India,” which highlights the imbalance of India’s IT human capital industry.

it-employmentQuality of India’s private education sector is questioned in study.

After interviewing hundreds of MNC CEOs and HR executives and college principals, Knowledgefaber found India’s IT capability was highly concentrated amongst a handful of states and institutions across the vast, populous nation.

The report concluded that 45 percent of students, who primarily emerged from Tier 2 and 3 colleges, were only good enough to work at IT services firm such as Infosys and Wipro.

It added only some five percent of students who trained at Tier 1 institutions, such as the network of Information Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Regional Education Colleges (RECs), were skilled, smart, and capable enough to develop software products for large companies such as Yahoo, Google and NetApp. Incidently just last month, Google hired an IIT alumni to lead its newly-combined Android and Chrome divisions.

The remaining 50 percent who trained at Tier 3B colleges last year, were unemployable or found “very small jobs”.

Goel said the demand for high-quality IIT and REC graduates significantly outstripped supply.

“We’re talking about the top 25 to 40 colleges which are really global level education but everybody is trying to hire from the same talent pool,” said Goel, who has studied the subject for the past eight years,” he said.

According to the CEO, it is a big problem for companies that establish an Indian operation on the promise of cheap, qualified, and plentiful IT labor, but quickly find they must improve wages and conditions to attract, and retain, the best talent.

Interestingly five southern states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharshtra, Karnataka, and Kerala, produced 76 percent of the total engineering graduates passing out of India.

The report predicts India’s colleges will produce 476,000 graduates in 2017—a six percent compound annual growth rate from 2013.

The private sector has started to bridge the valley of death that spans the highly desirable Tier 1 graduates and their less popular counterparts from other institutions: Infosys and Wipro train college and high school graduates over six to twelve months to bring them up to speed, and similar programs that have been adopted by IBM and Accenture.

Goel also pointed to “new age universities” such as Venture Hire, founded by former venture capital investors, which trains IIT graduates to the standard required to thrive at the world’s top software product developers.

“One thing we can’t do is reverse the demand for Indian talent. We can’t stop it. I wish we could bring to some halt and raise the supply side, but companies are very thirsty for Indian talent,”said Goel.

“If we can’t win the game we’ll change the game; and when we change the game it will not be the traditional education system, it will be a completely new way of looking at education.

“Globally the same thing is happening,” he said, pointing to the fact that Stanford and Harvard distribute courses online, and have established operations in India.

India Inc hunts deeper, goes further, for talent Business Standard

Rajiv Chaudhury, a 22-year-old pursuing a management course at a Kolkata-based business school wasn’t very optimistic about getting placed with a big corporate house. This pessimism stemmed from the fact that he did not belong to an Indian Institute of Management (IIM). But contrary to his view, a leading private sector bank visited the campus and recruited him along with some of his batchmates.

For India Inc, IIMs and few other top management institutes no longer remain the only hunting ground for talent. With rising costs and geographical expansions across the country, companies are looking beyond the crème de la crème to hire from the Tier -II and -II institutes as well.

Take Deloitte, for example. Apart from the top institutes, the consulting firm also visits smaller ones. P Thiruvengadam, senior director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India, said they visit the other B-Schools (apart from the top ones), as their talent search is wide. “We require individuals from a wide demography and different backgrounds. Hence, we deliberately try to visit as many institutes as possible,” he said. The firm hires about 60 per cent of its talent from Tier-1 institutes, and the rest from other B-schools.

Others too are also not shying away. Capgemini hires students from different leadership schools to fulfill their requirements. Rajesh Padmanabhan, head - HR, Capgemini India, said, “We review the campuses every year based on candidate performance history, joining rates and infancy attrition rates. Overall, we value institutes as long-term partners. Broad basing and adding more campuses add to varied experience but we look for optimal yields per campus so that it is a win-win association.”

Padmanabhan added that Capgemini will continue to visit schools based on the above parameters and will look at renewed list year-on-year. Human resource experts said that with companies expanding to smaller towns, recruiting locally makes business sense, as costs are lower. “Large corporates now prefer hiring locally, as they can save almost 30-40 per cent on administrative costs and have confidence that the individual will not quit within a short period,” said a senior official with a global HR consultancy.

Financial sector firms have also actively started hiring from other business schools. Jaydeep Chaure, head-HR, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, said the insurance firm visits B-Schools in Tier -II and -II cities for recruitment. He added that the objective for targeting these colleges is to create more opportunities and employability for the youth across the country, and not only in the top-20 cities or colleges.

Similarly, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance also hires from business schools across the country. “Bajaj Allianz General Insurance hires for B-schools for two of its programmes - management trainees from Tier-II and -II colleges, and executive trainees from Tier-III colleges. We have seen in the past that students hired from Tier-II and -II colleges are often more flexible and adaptable,” said Roopa Kochhar, head-HR, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.

HDFC Bank, too, is on the same track. Since almost 75 per cent of its branches are outside the top-9 metros, keeping the foray into deeper geographies, HDFC Bank has tie-ups with around 30 institutes. In the past four to five years, the bank has recruited about 2,000 people from the institutes with whom it had tied up. These recruitment could be for functions like branch banking, sales, relationship managers to name a few.

Private bank Ratnakar Bank went for campus recruitment for the first time, this year. Their choice of institution is based on what function we are recruitment for. Throwing light on experience at Tier-II and -III institutes, Rajeev Ahuja, the bank’s chief of strategy said, “They have much grounded level of expectations, are focused and show hunger for work.”

Some human resource experts also said that corporates have now turned away from too much focus on the top B-Schools, as some have had experiences of students quitting within a year.

A senior HR official of a private sector general insurer said that they stopped visiting the Tier-1 institutes as students demanded astronomical salary packages and also did not show any commitment to be associated with us for a long duration.

“While it would be incorrect to generalise all students, it has been noticed that students from Tier-1 institutes have high bargaining power and often make unreasonable demands. This may not be favoured by corporates, especially at a time, when they are crunched for costs. Though, they have not shunned these top institutes completely, an equal emphasis is being given to the other institutes as well,” informed the vice president with a human resource search firm.

(Source: business-standard.com)