Swapneel had to hunt for a job himself as he did not get placed through IIPM’s campus placements. “I posted my resume on naukri.com and other job websites, and then got a job through a placement agency.” He currently works at General Electric in Collections.

Statistics
IIPM does not offer any organised statistics about its placements. We spoke to Anirudh Sharma, the Campus Placements Manager at IIPM Delhi, and were told that that information will not be available. He said “We can give a list of recruiters, but detailed information is not available.” This means that no one can know exactly which companies came to IIPM campuses during any particular year, and how many students a company picked up. We did a random search of a few private B-schools including TAPMI, NMIMS and Welingkars. All of them had the data available on their websites.

Placed Where?
And speaking about websites, the “Placements” section on IIPM’s website has not been updated for 2 years, and still features their old advertisements that claimed McKinsey & Co. as one of their on-campus recruiters. We had earlier checked with officials at both McKinsey & Co. and McKinsey Knowledge Center (just to make sure), and at both places we were told the same thing - neither of them have hired students from IIPM campuses. In response to a mail sent to them regarding the matter, a senior official at McKinsey said, “We have neither hired anyone from IIPM, nor picked up anyone for summer training till date.”

“The Year 2005 has seen more than 400 companies visiting the IIPM Campus...”
Max New York Life is one of the companies mentioned in the ad as one which has ‘visited the campus’. Kapil Mehta, VP Business Development Max New York Life, says “We have never visited IIPM campuses for placements.” There is, though, one IIPM student working at Max New York Life’s head office in Gurgaon, but this student got the job by applying himself, and not via IIPM.

"Highest International Package: 36 lacs" Everyone knows the name of the student from IIM Ahmedabad who was placed with HSBC for a record $152,000(Ravi Singhvi, for the uninitiated). We called IIPM to find out about their prodigious "36 lacs" placement, and were transferred to four different people before being told that the placement was from Delhi, to a company called Primus Telecom. Still no name of the student placed though. Also, a majority of IIPM's international placements are to Planman Consulting ofiices in different countries.

ING Vysya, mentioned in IIPM’s ads as a campus visitor, has also never been to IIPM for campus placements. Rakesh Parangat, HR Manager for ING Vysya Business, said “IIPM had approached us for a summer placement initiative, but we didn’t find it worthwhile... ING has not been to IIPM campuses to recruit students. If an ex-student, so to speak, of IIPM has been hired by ING it is because of that person’s own initiative.” Sri Ganesh, HR Manager for ING Vysya Life Insurance also confirmed the same. “ING Life has not been to ANY college for recruitment, let alone IIPM” he says.

We also spoke to Mr. Ajay Kumar, Management Development Manager, HLL. He informed us that HLL has never visited IIPM’s campuses for recruitment. We are told though that HLL Network, the direct selling arm of HLL, has hired students from IIPM. The jobs that these students are given are related to sales and direct marketing. The pay scales, perks and designations are considerably lower than those of the students hired by HLL.

Kalpana Rao, Talent Director Ogilvy & Mather India, confirmed to us that O&M haven’t been to IIPM for recruitment. “We haven’t gone to any campus” she said. She also told us that O&M had not hired anyone from IIPM in the recent past.

The Visitors
Rahul Rai, an HR representative at Indiabulls (IIPM’s major recruiter - 20+ recruitments from the Mumbai campus) informed us that the IIPM students hired are placed as Selling Agents, or Selling and Relationship Agents. Their job profile is “Generating new clients and servicing them by providing investment advice on day-to-day basis.” The pay package offered to these students is Rs.4.5 lacs p.a of which only Rs.1.8 lacs is fixed and the remaining Rs.2.7 lacs is variable.

Oracle, also mentioned in the advertisements as a campus recruiter, informed us that they didn’t visit any B-school last year for placements, and instead conducted an off-campus program at Mumbai in Dec. ‘04. They did telephonic interviews with the B-Schools in the western region and IIPM Mumbai & Pune were among them. This year they plan to visit the B-Schools for placements and both these institutes are there in their list. They hired 4 students last year and the compensation was Rs.4 lacs cost-to-company.

Students also informed us that companies like ABN Amro and American Express also visited the campus.