Most institutes have struggled to place their entire batch, so much so that recent reports indicate that even the premier Indian Institutes of Management took close to 10 days to place their batches! Given this, the situation is lesser known institutes have been much worse, with some institutes not having placed a significant number of their students.

The reasons for this are not difficult to find. Firstly, the current economic crisis is not limited to any particular sector, unlike the IT sector related dot com bust some time back. This time around, a large number of sectors have been adversely affected. Also, earlier crises like the east-Asian one were limited to certain parts of the world, but this one is far more widespread.

All this has translated into fewer companies recruiting from campus; and those that are coming for recruitments are taking a lesser number of people-they are making far less offers. The more reputed management schools have an advantage here as companies would like to maintain their 'relationships' with these institutes, and thus not skip recruiting for a year-this may mean that they might get a lower 'slot' during placements season in later years. Companies have fewer such concerns as far as the lesser known institutes are.

In addition, there is another problem. Given the fee increases for the MBA course seen in recent times, not only would students have paid a high amount for the two year course, but they also now have to start repaying the loan that they might have taken as soon as they start earning in this time of lower salaries. So, given this situation, what can students do? Here are some tips:

The author, Sidharth Balakrishna, is an MBA from IIM Calcutta and is employed with a management consultancy firm. He has also been a visiting faculty with MBA coaching centres in New Delhi, and can be contacted at bsiddharth_2001@yahoo.co.in.

Photographs: Rediff Archives

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