The Hindu Business Line : IIMB thinking hard to fill the coffer

How can the IIMs patch up the gaping hole created by the HRD Ministry? Can they turn to the corporates for support? As suggested by Mr Yogi Deveshwar, Chairman of the Board of Governors, IIM Kolkota, is it possible to hike the fee charged to corporates during campus recruitment?

Take the instance of IIM Bangalore. It charges a flat fee of Rs 30,000 for a domestic company and $2,000 for a foreign company that participates in the recruitment process, irrespective of whether the company falls on Day Zero or Day One or later.

But the other IIMs (Ahmedabad and Kolkota) follow a differential pricing system. A Day Zero company in IIMA pays around around Rs 1.5 lakh and the foreign company around $5,000 for participation. The fee, of course, is lower for the subsequent time slots.

This apart, the companies need to pay a recruitment fee for every offer they make to a student.

At IIMB, a domestic company making a job offer is charged Rs 30,000 per student and a foreign company is charged $2,000 for every overseas posting.

Speaking on whether it would be feasible to hike the participation-recruitment fee and to what extent, Mr Ganesh Prabhu, Chairperson, Placements, IIMB, said, "The participation fee should be comparable to the cost the company would incur if it were to go to the market directly for recruitment. Ideally, it should be less than that."

The hike in this fee, if initiated, should be "reasonable," he said.

"We could perhaps increase the participation fee to Rs 40,000 per company. But if we ask for a figure higher than that, it might deter some companies from participating in the recruitment process."

Recruitment recharge

EVERY year, after the campus recruitment process, each of the IIMs receive anywhere between Rs 1 crore and Rs 1.5 crore every year from the corporate world. This would include a fixed fee for participation and a varying fee for recruiting students.

This year, IIMB, which had nearly 100 companies visiting the campus to select from among 210 students, will show an outstanding of about Rs 90 lakh for this year alone from the recruiting companies, according to Mr Prabhu. (This is about Rs 60 lakh as recruitment fees and Rs 30 lakh as participation fees.)

On the issue of defaulters, Mr Prabhu said, "Over the years, IIMB is yet to receive about Rs 6 lakh from various companies."

He clarified that most of the bad debts fall in the recruitment fee category. "This is because there are several grey areas in the recruitment process. Sometimes, the student has accepted the offer but not joined and the company has not communicated this to us in writing."

But in clear cases of defaulting, the companies have been barred from participating the next year, he admitted.

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