The recession seems to have bought about a sea-change in the way Indian B-School students are looking at their future employers. Till last year, Financial services was the most preferred domain by these soon-to-be-graduate students.
However, recent survey done by Neilsen – Campus Track B-School Survey – is showing an emerging trend, where students are clearly favoring core companies like FMCG in a bid to get a stable start to their career in the wake of recent financial turmoil.
Number of B-School students who chose financial services companies in campus Interviews last year haven’t even got their joining letters as yet. Considering this, the job security offered by the FMCG industry has become a major attraction for this year’s graduates.
FMCG companies topped the most preferred list with Management Consulting (35%), Software/IT Consulting (23%), Foreign Banks and Retailing (both 22%) completing the top 5 Industries where management graduates are looking as their future employers.
Industry of Future
According to the survey, more than 30% B-School students viewed Retail as one of the most promising sectors of the future. Other industries that feature in the top five industries of the future are Management Consultancies (27%), Entertainment & Media (25%), FMCG (21%) and Investment Banking (19%).
Most Admired Role Model
More than one-quarter of respondents (27%) named Indian business mogul Ratan Tata as their most admired corporate role model.
Reasons for moving on:
Graduates tend to stay in their first job for two to three years and expect to move on in search of better career options (65%), better salary/ better designation (40%).
Interestingly, 17 percent of students expect to move out of their first job to pursue higher studies.
It would be really interesting to know whether student preferences will change in coming years – We will have to wait and watch if these students come back to financial sector once we are completely out of recession and financial Sector starts thriving back again. After all, it is the sector where pay packages are way above all the other Industries.
Whats your opinion?
Note: The “Campus Track B-School Survey,” surveyed 1,311 soon-to-be graduates at India’s top 40 management institutes to arrive at above conclusions
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Author: Arun Prabhudesai
Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin or get in touch with him at admin-at-trak-dot-in or 91.9822575676.Related posts:
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
FMCG is much more stable as any crisis cant stop a person from spending minute amounts. Well for Ratan Tata episode I’m sure everyone loves him as their role model. He is very wise and most are behind him for simplicity and patriotism. This also includes me who happens to be his biggest follower, even my wallpaper has his pic.
The real growth drivers are the villages and they are the ones who drive up the FMCG products growth. A preference towards FMCG as career / growth in their stocks means the real economy is growing.
IT and Finance were overhyped anyway.
IT and Finance are overhyped because they are the ones who give you fat pay packages. Like I mentioned, I woudnt be surprised if they come back in vogue in next couple of years. The smell of greens escapes no-body :).
and FMCG companies will never be able to afford what these companies offer in their haydays !
of course…but sustainable grown comes only from FMCG companies only. Both career and stock price wise ;)
Is comparing Retail to IT an apples to oranges comparison? The reason I ask that is because IT is an industry like Retail, but it serves local and global markets. When you serve global clients, your talent, efforts and rewards all tend to be measured in a global context. On the other hand, Retail business is local (excluding exports which I imagine is not part of Retail) business and so the clients are local and hence the talent, efforts and rewards all tend to be measured in a local context. Only at the mid to high levels of management, may be there might be similarities between Retail and IT.
Back to the discussion, I think it is good that students are able to explore different industries and not be limited to IT. Finance as a sector has immense potential. Students should be educated and trained to learn and participate in Securities firms, banks, Investment banks etc. There are several roles available in these industries including legal, compliance, audit, product control (finance), treasury, governance, operations, M&A, Road shows., etc – so one can definitely make a career out of them.