India’s Top Recruiters: Cognizant tops ET's study; Wipro, Deloitte, HCL, ICICI Bank and KPMG in top five

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: In a testimony to the growing demand for topnotch MBA talent, India Inc’s top recruiters have stepped up campus hiring by as much as 33.5%, an exclusive ET survey has revealed.

Ten of India’s biggest recruiters hired a total of 1,033 MBAs from 22 top business schools ET surveyed for this study. Around 774 graduates were picked by the top ten recruiters across 21 B-schools the previous year.

These numbers, in absolute terms, reflect what is easily the most aggressive MBA talent drive in the five years that the ET India’s Top Recruiters study is being conducted.

Cognizant retained its first place for the third year running, making as many as 192 offers at these campuses.

Three other companies — Wipro, Deloitte and HCL — made over 100 offers. Last year, only two companies had made offers in excess of 100.

The ET top 10 recruiters survey results are based on data from IIM Ahmedabad; IIM Bangalore; IIM Calcutta; IIM Kozhikode; IIM Indore; IIM Shillong; IIM Ranchi; IIM Raipur; IIM Udaipur; Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies; Indian Institute of Foreign Trade; International Management Institute, New Delhi; Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi; Faculty of Management Studies, BHU; Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi; XLRI Jamshedpur; XIM Bhubaneswar; SP Jain Institute of Management & Research; IIM Rohtak; MDI Gurgaon; IIM Kashipur and IIM Trichy.

IIT Delhi’s Department of Management Studies and IIM Rohtak replaced Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies this year. There were 21 institutes last year.

With one in every 20-25 technology professionals holding a master’s in business administration, Sriram Rajagopal, vice president — HR at Cognizant Technology Solutions, says his company is probably one of the most aggressive MBA recruiters in India.

Besides the 192 hired across the 22 business schools, the company offered jobs to more than 500 MBAs from the 2015 graduating batch.

“We are in the midst of a oncein-a-decade shift in the technology landscape. This trend is creating signifi cant opportunities for B-school graduates. We believe our industryleading growth is, in part, a function of our ability to proactively provide solutions to business problems and not just technological capability and this attribute is strengthened by our MBA talent,” said Rajagopal.

Following on the heels of Cognizant are Wipro, Deloitte, HCL Technologies, ICICI Bank and KPMG. The fi rst fi ve companies have been regulars on the top 10 list for the past fi ve years.

In fact, the fi fth position this year is shared by two. KPMG has made a bigbang entry into the list for the fi rst time to be alongside ICICI Bank. The consultancy fi rm hired 90 students from the surveyed schools, and reported a more than 20% overall jump in its MBA intake over the past two years.

“Our MBA intake over the past few years has increased substantially,” said Shalini Pillay, head of people, performance and culture at KPMG in India. “This is commensurate with our growth across various services in the advisory space. MBAs, with and without pre-qualifi cation work experience, greatly add to this rich and swiftly growing talent pool of ours.”

Rival Deloitte reported a 30% increase in overall MBA hiring over the previous year, taking in 108 graduates at the surveyed schools alone. Wipro said it strengthened its focus on hiring from select Bschools and recruited 127. HCL and ICICI Bank hired 101 and 90, respectively, from the surveyed business schools.

“Hiring talent from top-tier business schools through campus recruitment, thereby building a talent pipeline to create leaders for tomorrow, has been integral to ICICI Bank’s recruitment strategy. This year, we have recruited 180 students from business schools across the country (including from those the survey has not covered),” said TK Srirang, the bank’s senior general manager and HR head.



Accenture and Vodafone enhanced B-school hiring and reported a signifi cant uptick in this year’s numbers.

Accenture was the top recruiter at the top three IIMs, with 49 offers, of them 21 at IIM Ahmedabad alone.

“Yes, we are hiring more MBAs now. We believe that MBA talent is extremely important and a key component of our hiring and growth strategy,” said Sukhpreet Kalra, associate director, recruitment, for Accenture in India.

Vodafone recruited 82 graduates from the surveyed schools to debut on the list at the eighth position. In all, it hired 145 trainees across Indian B-schools, compared with 114 last year.

Amazon led the ecommerce companies vying for fresh MBA talent, hiring 84 across the schools surveyed and moving to the seventh position from joint ninth last year.

With Snapdeal snapping up the ninth slot and making its debut on the list with 81 hires, India’s largest online retailer, Flipkart, missed out on the top 10 rankings by a whisker.

Raj Raghavan, HR director at Amazon India, said the company has seen a 140% increase in its MBA intake over the past two years.

“B-school graduates are a key part of our growth story in India and we are building a leadership pipeline for the future,” he said. The company offered roles across operations, consumer business, HR and fi nance, and around 25% of its MBA hires came through preplacement offers.

Snapdeal, for the fi rst time, had a large structured B-school hiring plan. It hired for roles in sales and marketing, business strategy, category management, supply chain and product management.

“MBA graduates have proven to be better equipped to analyse, interpret and fi nd actionable trends from complex data. Thus, it is crucial for us to get on board MBA talent for the company’s overall business and growth strategy. We have hired around 250 MBA graduates across Indian B-schools this year,” said Vice President Saurabh Nigam.

The company created an engagement strategy with identifi ed B-schools before going in for fi nal campus placements by hosting competitions, sponsoring events and holding leaders’speak sessions. It recruited interns to review the candidate pool at campuses and formalised an onboarding plan for all management trainees.

Companies like Deloitte and Vodafone hired a big chunk of B-school graduates through pre-placement offers (PPOs).

“In the last fiscal (year), we had about 288 interns… A majority of them went on to secure PPOs,” said SV Nathan, senior director and chief talent offi cer at Deloitte in India. Out of the 100 B-school candidates Vodafone hired this year, 57% had been through PPOs. The focus on B-school talent is only going to sharpen for recruiters, the study shows.

Amazon’s Raghavan said with India becoming a major growth story for the US-headquartered company, it was looking for top talent from business schools to build a career in Amazon.

“Our commitment towards nurturing and educating MBA talent is long term and for that we would continue to focus on hiring talent that meets our objective of keeping a strong focus towards quality,” he said.

RIL, which entered the list last year has dropped out this year, as has Goldman Sachs which was a fixture for the past two years.

Hiring Snapshots

The top recruiters at the top 3 IIMs (A, B and C) were the same as last year: Accenture in first place with 49 hires, followed by Boston Consulting Group (36) and Amazon (30). KPMG came in at fourth position with 29 hires; while Samsung and McKinsey tied in the fifth place with 21 hires.

While there was an increase in hiring numbers of regular recruiters, larger batch sizes led to a number of new recruiters entering the fray. XLRI had more than 20 first-timers including Edelweiss, Uber Cabs; at XIM Bhubaneswar, out of 58 recruiters for the flagship BM programme, 23 were new including Spencers. IIM Kashipur had 36 new recruiters including GAIL, Jindal Steel & Power and Maruti Suzuki.

Startups, both big and small, flocked to campuses to recruit students. Those doing the rounds included the likes of Housing, Practo, Urban Ladder, Hopscotch, ShopClues, Zovi, AppsDaily, Mera Job India and Wooqer, among others.

The pre-placement route gained greater traction across companies this year. Vodafone offered PPOs to 57% interns who did their summer internships with the company this year compared to 37% PPOs in the year 2014. Cognizant gave PPOs to around 50% of its summer interns, while for KPMG, about 30% were made PPOs. Of the 60 candidates BCG onboarded, 31 were PPO holders.

While Amazon and Snapdeal picked up a healthy number of students across both IIMs and non-IIMs, Flipkart was conspicuous by its absence among the top 10 recruiters at the IIMs. It, however, recruited as many as 20 students from IIFT Delhi and 17 each from SPJIMR and MDI.

(With inputs from Brinda Dasgupta)