It hasn’t been long since HRKatha carried a story about how students from India’s business schools are increasingly feeling that better opportunities can come their way off campus. Now, the latest Deloitte survey seems to corroborate that in some way. The Campus Workforce Trends 2024 report reveals that for the first time in five years, there is a probability of projected salaries for management students dropping at least five per cent. In fact, even the students across campuses are expecting a drop in projected salaries in the range of five to 10 per cent.
There has been a decline of ten per cent in the average intake of internships. Pre-placement offers (PPOs) have dropped by 26 per cent annually. The budgets for campus hiring have been cut by 33 per cent.
That isn’t all; the report reveals a 250 basis point increase in variable pay over the last one year. Clearly, employers are leaning towards performance and prefer paying their employees based on results/deliverables.
When it comes to selecting talent, employers are definitely looking for specific skills and competencies. Engineering students with skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are in high demand, and so are management students with social selling skills. Computational biology seems to be attracting employers in the pharma sector.
Many surveys have indicated that fewer employees quit their jobs in 2023 than in 2022, as the Great Resignation wave that swept across the globe in 2021 ebbed and economic uncertainty made employees less adventurous and more wary. However, today, attrition continues to be a problem area, especially among MBA graduates. One-year and two-year attrition rates reported from top-tier campuses are 21 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively, while the figures are lower for tier 2 and 3 campuses.
That is why organisations are increasingly adopting flexible work arrangements, performance-based incentives and targeted career-development programmes. They are realising the need to re-examine their retention strategies.
The latest Deloitte India study that covered more than 190 organisations and 500 campuses across India, shows that there has been a steady growth in campus compensation at a 5.2 per cent CAGR in the past five years. This is surprising since placement budgets have actually gone down. Yet, attrition remains a pain point.
The survey goes on to reveal that engineering graduates prefer taking up a job in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, while management students prefer Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.
1 Comment
Overall business situation is going through challenges