India Inc widens talent hunt to undergraduate colleges

Consultants and placement officials said companies across sectors like banking, manufacturing and power are signing up students for profiles ranging from finance to marketing and strategy. In addition to impressive salaries, many companies also offer assistance for higher education, in an effort to retain them for a longer period of time.

From this year, Tata Power Limited will recruit graduates and diploma holders beyond the regular intake of B-school graduates and engineers under its Cadre 2.0 strategy.

“These are not only a defensive mechanism to manage attrition, but we also need to develop relevant talent for us. If we can enable them to have higher qualifications, higher skills, awareness and experience in our context, it will be a win-win for both,” said Himal Tewari, Chief Human Resources Officer, Tata Power.

From a company’s point of view, talent development becomes easier if employees join at a young age. This helps retain them for longer than the two to five years that many employees stick around these days. And, many younger workers stay for even less time.

Several banks conduct online programs for graduate students in collaboration with universities and those who complete these courses receive cash rewards. HSBC utilizes the alumni pool of colleges such as Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi, NMIMS in Mumbai and St. Xavier’s and Christ University with campuses in Bangalore and New Delhi.

“As a powerful talent acquisition engine, we approach talent recruitment in a variety of ways to meet business requirements. Archana Chadha, Head of HR, HSBC India, said the rationale behind this was to incentivize young minds into roles across lines of business to deliver specific results and help build a pipeline of young talent working on key initiatives.

mint Several graduates have spoken to college placement teams, who have expressed interest in established companies as well as startups.

“This year has been the highest salary so far ₹35 lakhs, and in 2022, it was ₹30.6 lakhs. We received a similar number of offers in the first phase (August to December) when FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) and consulting firms came in,” said a member of the SRCC placement team. The first was Aon, a consulting company mintits questions

A student of a graduate college in Delhi said that students of commerce, economics, statistics and mathematics are in demand for positions as research analysts. Last year average salary was paid in this college ₹9.5 lakhs, and was the highest ₹40 lakhs. Placements are currently underway for this year’s graduating batch.

The Lady Sri Ram College (LSR) website says that for last year’s batch, the firms that were recruited included McKinsey & Co, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co, Kepler Canon, Accenture, Dalberg, Trinity, Deloitte, EY and KPMG, Consulting, finance, marketing and sales, media and research as well as monitoring.

Companies with similar profiles also go to business schools to recruit, and the salaries offered are not very different, although in some cases, the profiles of senior students may be more complex.