In a fierce war for talent, India's ten biggest recruiters stepped up their B-school hiring significantly, recruiting a total of 1,543 MBAs from 26 leading B-schools in 2016, compared with 1,033 hires across 22 campuses in 2015, according to an exclusive ET study.
BCCL/representational image
From data put together across 26 campuses ¡ª the largest number in the six years that the ET Top Recruiters survey is being conducted ¡ª it was clear that top recruiters were hiring in larger numbers than before.
This year, for instance, it was an average of 59 hires by the top 10 per campus, compared with around 47 and 37 average hires per campus in the past two years, respectively.
There were quite a few surprises and upsets in store. Like in the case of Deloitte, which muscled its way into top position, displacing IT major Cognizant, which has been a fixture in the first place for the past three years running. Despite consistently featuring in the top 5 recruiter list ¡ª it was No. 3 last year ¡ª Deloitte has never made it to the top spot.
This time, however, the consulting firm walked into the No. 1 position with 282 hires across the surveyed campuses.
BCCL/representational image
Cognizant, with 245 hires across surveyed campuses, weighed in at No. 2 spot, followed by ICICI Bank in third. The biggest upset, consistent with the turbulence the e-commerce sector is currently undergoing, is in the case of Snapdeal. The e-commerce major, which was at No. 9 last year, has disappeared completely from the overall top recruiter list across campuses.
The technology space, however, put up a strong show. Infosys made a grand entry into the top recruiters list at No. 4, its first time in the list since 2012.
A large part of this credit is due to aggressive hiring numbers at campuses such as WeSchool, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Goa Institute of Management and TAPMI, which were included in the survey for the first time.
BCCL/representational image
Infosys apart, two other technology biggies made a re-entry into the list. This included Tata Consultancy Services, which last featured on the top recruiters list in 2013, and IBM, which was not seen on the list since emerging as the top recruiter in the 2012 edition.
TCS came in at eighth place this year while IBM was at No. 10.
KPMG and Amazon both lost ground from last year's edition. HCL, which was in fourth spot last year, dropped off the list this time, as did Vodafone, which was at No. 8 last time.
Only the top 10 recruiters at each of the B-schools tracked here have been considered for the purpose of the survey.?