For years, Banking & Finance recruiters were responsible for the upward spiral in salaries at top Indian business schools. Top performing students on elite campuses are the ones who have a good chance at making it to global MNC banks. Although hiring has been muted over the last couple of years due to global headwinds, it still remains the most preferred domain among the cream of students on each campus.

This part looks at the most desirable Banking & Finance and Consulting firms among business school students in India among our 3 segments of respondents.

Industry Professionals
Class of 2014 (Final Placements due Jan-March 2014)
Class of 2015 (Summer Placements due Sep-Nov 2013) & MBA Aspirants

This is part III. The InsideIIM Recruitment Survey 2013 is based on 960 genuine and clean responses.

 

Banking & Finance

The class of 2014 (who selected Finance as their preferred domain) and Post-MBA professionals (who are working in this domain) were asked about their preferences about working in each company on a scale of ‘Most Desirable’, 'Highly Desirable’, ‘I’m Confused’, ‘I do not wish to apply’ and ‘I have never heard of this company before’.  A mean score was calculated where Most Desirable is scored as 5 and I have never heard of this company is scored 0.

MBA aspirants and 1st Year MBA students - Class of 2015 were asked to simply rank their top 5 companies. A weighted scored was calculated assigning weights of 10,6,4,2,1 for the 5 ranks.

According to us, different inferences can be drawn from the rankings depending on the segment. Industry professionals have a fair idea about companies in their own sector and have a comprehensive view - growth prospects, compensation (read - bonuses), work culture, history of firings and even the performance of a company in the industry. First year MBA aspirants and Class of 2015 rely on popular media and the brand perception of companies to rank. They do so without even knowing what investment banking is or what does a bank's treasury do. Class of 2014's rankings can be attributed to attraction of starting salaries, feedback from summer interns, a company's activities on campus, roles offered - Front-end, Middle office, Support etc.  Hence, inferences need to be made keeping the context in mind.

Given below are the results :

Post MBA Industry Professionals

The top 3 are unchanged from last year. Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley still rule. Credit Suisse has slipped from the top 5 and J.P. Morgan, Citibank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) have entered the top 5.  The American banks BAML,Citibank and J.P.Morgan have seen improvement in their rankings across all segments of respondents.

 

Ranks	2013 - Industry Professional	2012 - Industry Professionals
1	Goldman Sachs	Goldman Sachs
2	Deutsche Bank	Deutsche Bank
3	Morgan Stanley	Morgan Stanley
4	J.P.Morgan & Barclays	Credit Suisse
5	Citi & Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Barclays
6	Standard Chartered	UBS, Bank of America Merill Lynch, Citibank, Standard Chartered, BNP Paribas
7	Credit Suisse	JP Morgan
8	UBS & BNP Paribas	Royal Bank of Scotland
9	Royal Bank of Scotland	Nomura
10	Nomura	HSBC

 

Gainers : J.P.Morgan, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Nomura

Losers : Credit Suisse, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC (Rank 12 - 2013), BNP Paribas

Top Indian Banking and Financial services recruiters - Post MBA Industry Professionals

 No Indian firms features in the top 10.  However, this year we bring you the top 5 among Indian firms.

Class of 2014

 

Ranks	Class of 2014	Class of 2013
1	Deutsche Bank	Deutsche bank
2	Morgan Stanley	Morgan Stanley
3	Goldman Sachs	Barclays
4	Barclays	Goldman Sachs & Standard Chartered
5	J.P.Morgan & Bank of America Merrill Lynch	J.P.Morgan & Citi
6	Citibank & Credit Suisse	UBS
7	Standard Chartered	Bank of America Merill Lynch
8	BNP Paribas	HSBC
9	Nomura	BNP Paribas
10	HSBC & Royal Bank of Scotland	Credit Suisse

 

Gainers : Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas

Losers : HSBC, UBS (Class of 2014 - Rank 11), Standard Chartered, Barclays

Deutsche Bank becomes the most preferred recruiter of students when they are preparing for Final Placements. Deutsche Bank was also No.1 among the Class of 2013 in last year's survey. There is another trend - Goldman Sachs loses pole position among the graduating batch.  Is it due to the middle office profiles offered by Goldman Sachs at a lot of top campuses?  There is a noticeable drop in the ranks of the swiss bank UBS across all segments. They have always been selective about campuses they visit but it seems there was a pause in recruitment last year even on these select campuses. This has an effect on desirability too as infrequent hiring leads to lesser visibility.

Top Indian Banking and Financial services recruiters - Class of 2014

No Indian firm in the top 10.  However, important to note the entry of HDFC and Axis in the top 5 among current final year students. Industry professionals have ranked other firms above them.

Class of 2015 and MBA Aspirants

 There is pure brand perception at play here. There is very little knowledge about roles, compensation or even specialties of each firm. For e.g. many respondents here are unlikely to know which banks have corporate and retail banking divisions and which banks are solely investment banks. Some wouldn't even know the difference between the two.  The results seem to be inline with expectations. Deutsche Bank takes a tumble to rank 4 here.

 

Ranks	Class of 2015 & this year's Aspirants Pool	Class of 2014 & last year's Aspirant Pool
1	Goldman Sachs	Goldman Sachs
2	Morgan Stanley	Deutsche bank
3	J.P.Morgan	J.P. Morgan
4	Deutsche Bank	Morgan Stanley
5	CitiBank	Barclays
6	Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Bank of America Merill Lynch
7	Barclays	Citibank
8	Royal Bank of Scotland	Royal Bank of Scotland
9	Credit Suisse	BNP Paribas
10	Standard Chartered	Credit Suisse

 

 Gainers : Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse

Losers : Deutsche Bank, J.P.Morgan, Citibank, BNP Paribas, Barclays

Top 5 Indian Firms - Class of 2015 & Aspirants

It is very interesting that a firm like Avendus Capital also features among the Class of 2015 and Aspirants above names like Edelweiss and Kotak.

Summary

There is a fair bit of complexity involved when it comes to recruitment in the Banking & Finance space. There are multiple types of roles, multiple compensation structures within the same company, different roles offered on different campuses, different types of training programmes etc. There are campus loyalties involved here too. Keeping everything in context, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been ranked top across two years and by all segments of respondents.  Barclays has been in the top 5 consistently too. There is definitely something right about their recruitment strategies and reputation management. It is clearly not only about compensation as there are many banks which have been ranked lower who offer fatter packages.

One commonality among the top ranked firms is that they mainly offer investment banking profiles.  Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank offer profiles which are middle office or support profiles to client facing desks elsewhere in the world. These are on offer on most campuses except IIM ABC (although the slowdown has meant that even IIM ABC are competing for these roles now). The relatively higher compensation and the foreign travel clinch it for them along with the hope that there will be a movement to the front office after a few years.

 

Part I – Most preferred work cities, loan statistics, costs of a MBA and more

Part II - Minimum Salary Expectations, Best Pre-Placement Talk, Job Satisfaction and more

You can read the results of the Recruitment Survey 2012 here