Top Recruiters Like Goldman, Citigroup, Pepsi & Others In Fierce War For Female Grads At IIMs

A fierce battle for female talent is set to erupt at the IIM placement season this month as a bunch of marquee recruiters - all keen to improve their diversity scores – prepare to swoop in on the limited women graduates passing out of the institutes this year.

Exactly 533 women, or 22% of the class of 2,442 students, will graduate from six leading IIMs this year. But combined demand from leading companies is likely to be higher.

A sample of leading recruiters – Bain & Company, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, American Express, PepsiCo and Bharti Airtel - are keen to ensure that as high as 28-50% of their B-School hires this year are women.

This excess demand for women in comparison to the gender ratio at IIMs is likely to spark a talent war in the coming weeks.

Bain & Co’s plans this placement season are a good indicator of things to come. The consulting firm – one of the biggest recruiters at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton – is likely to ensure that 50% of its US B-School hires are women. The mandate for India hiring is not very different.

NO DIFFERENTIAL COMPENSATION

“We believe gender diversity is an important way of bringing new ideas to clients,” says Russ Hagey, worldwide chief talent officer and senior partner at Bain & Company. “Across the globe, we are asking all our offices, including India, to be highly mindful of this at campuses.”

Adds Nikhil Prasad Ojha, strategy head of Bain & Co India and a partner who oversees HR: “We will definitely be increasing the intake of talented women this year. Gender diversity helps us in developing more innovative and collaborative approaches.”

About half of the management trainees PepsiCo recruited through pre-placement offers this year have been women, up from 30% last year.

American Express wants to ensure that 40% of B-School grads hired this year are women, up from 30% during the past two years. 

At Citi too, women are expected to constitute about 40% of total hires through business schools in 2014. “A gender-diverse workforce understands clients better and is more creative and innovative,” says Anuranjita Kumar, country human resources officer for Citi India. “A higher intake of women talent across campuses provides a steady pipeline at the mid and senior levels.”

Axis Bank will recruit only women from ISB’s flagship post-graduate in management programme. This is part of a special programme called ‘Diversified Leadership Among Women in Banking’ that it runs at the B-School.

Over the past year, Goldman Sachs has extended an additional 83 professional and 57 internship offers to female graduates, a 7% and 10% increase each. V Bunty Bohra, the CEO of Goldman Sachs in India, says the critical elements of its business would only be possible with a strategic recruitment policy focused on inclusion.

In the past three years, Goldman Sachs has increased its offers to women by approximately 45% and internships by 43% for female graduates. Airtel has 28% of the total hires as women so far. “Promoting diversity across functions stimulates innovation with diverse ideas and boosts the growth potential for the company,” says an Airtel spokesperson.

For the moment, companies maintain they won’t offer differential compensation for women. “We won’t bend rules to pick a female graduate over a male graduate, but we would go with the female graduates if all other parameters are in place,” says Sachin Nandgaonkar, senior partner and director for BCG in India, and the head of recruitments for the firm. It is hoping that at least a third of its B-School recruits this year are women.

“We have only two women partners in our 10-year history. The numbers are much lower than what we would like,” says Nandgaonkar.

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