The InsideIIM Alumni Report series takes a look at where the graduates of
top business schools are working today, giving a rough estimate to all stakeholders about the concentration of alumni at the world's top companies across various industries. This report will be concerned with estimating the percentage of alumni of top MBA institutes at top consulting firms, as per the latest
Recruitment Survey. We have relied on publicly-available data from LinkedIn to carry out analyses and identify trends.
While LinkedIn provides us with enough data to decipher broad trends, these absolute numbers must be viewed with a degree of caution due to certain
limitations of the data collation process that prevent us from getting exact numbers.
Highlights of The Report
When we look at the concentration of alumni of
business schools established prior to 1966, the alumni of two elite business schools stand out - IIM Ahmedabad, and IIM Calcutta. Be it at the 3 biggest global management consulting firms - McKinsey, BCG and Bain, or the Big 4 of Accounting - EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, the alumni of IIMs A and C are in a significant majority. 40-50% of the total number of IIM A and C alumni in this report are working with one of the three MBB firms. Other institutes with decent representation at the world's top consulting firms include NITIE Mumbai and XLRI Jamshedpur.
Accenture and Deloitte appear to be the most preferred consulting companies to work with for the alumni of B-schools in this cluster.
Moving on to the alumni of
business schools established post-1966, a striking observation is the dominance of the alumni of two elite business schools - IIM Bangalore and the Indian School of Business. At the MBB firms, IIM Bangalore, ISB and IIM Lucknow alumni have a strong presence, and IIM Lucknow, SPJIMR and MDI have decent representation across most of the companies included in this report.
Deloitte appears to be the most preferred consulting company to work with for the alumni of B-schools in this cluster, followed by Accenture, EY and KPMG.
Find out more about
how we created this report.
Analysis For B-Schools Established Before 1966
The table above comprises the raw data for Indian business schools established prior to 1966. Please note the following:
- While relevant filters regarding roles and domains were applied in the research process, the existence of anomalies is possible. Therefore, there may be a positive or negative variance from the actual figures.
- All possible businesses of the companies have been considered. For instance, numbers under 'Accenture' consist of relevant employees at Accenture Strategy, Accenture Technology etc.
- In this report, a higher number does not equal more influence of alumni of specific business schools. The seniority of alumni, quality and diversity of roles play a bigger part. Unfortunately, this cannot be captured with exact accuracy given the paucity of time and subjectivity involved.
Company-Wise Slicing: Alumni Of Top Business Schools As A Percentage Of The Total Number Of Alumni Of Each Company
Cells for companies where %age of total alumni of a B-school exceeds 20% have been highlighted in Yellow.
Observations
Nearly all the medial columns in the above table are coloured Yellow, signifying the utter dominance of alumni of IIMs Ahmedabad and Calcutta at the top Consulting firms. At the MBB firms, none of the B-schools in this Cluster come remotely close to matching the presence of IIM A and C alumni, where the alumni of the two institutes make up 75-90% of the total. Only XLers come slightly close to matching IIMs A and C's numbers at BCG.
At the Big 4 of Accounting - Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and EY, and Accenture, the distribution of alumni is a tad bit more uniform, though IIM A and IIM C alumni still dominate 3 out of the Big 4. Other top business schools, the alumni of which are working in large numbers at the Big 4, include NITIE Mumbai and XLRI.
School-Wise Slicing: Alumni of Top Business Schools As A Percentage Of Overall No. Of Alumni Of Respective B-Schools
Cells for B-schools where %age of alumni at a particular company exceeds 15% has been highlighted in Yellow.
Observations
Accenture and Deloitte emerge as the top recruiters at 80-90% of the campuses mentioned in this report. Accenture has, over the past few years, been one of the largest recruiters at top B-school campuses. EY is the next big recruiter, with a large number of alumni of at least 3 B-schools mentioned in this report. Alumni of IIM A, IIM B, JBIMS and XLRI have good representation across McKinsey and BCG.
Nearly 40% of IIM Calcutta alumni in the top consulting firms belong to MBB, while nearly 50% of IIM A alumni across these companies are at MBB. Based on this data, and with management consulting being one of the most sought-after domains at both these institutes, it is likely that landing up at IIM A or IIM C can increase your chances of working with McKinsey, BCG or Bain as a management consultant. JBIMS and XLRI also have a significant representation at McKinsey and BCG, respectively.
TISS Mumbai has the largest representation at the Big 4 in terms of the percentage of alumni working there, with 89% of its alumni across these 15 companies working at KPMG, PwC, Deloitte or EY. TISS is followed by NITIE Mumbai, where 65% of the total alumni across these 15 companies work at the Big 4.
Alvarez & Marsal, Oliver Wyman, EY-Parthenon, Roland Berger, and Arthur D. Little are top consulting firms that see the least representation of Cluster 1 B-schools.
Analysis For B-Schools Established After 1966
The table above comprises the raw data for Indian business schools established post-1966. Please note the following:
- While relevant filters regarding roles and domains were applied in the research process, the existence of anomalies is possible. Therefore, there may be a positive or negative variance from the actual figures.
- All possible businesses of the companies have been considered. For instance, numbers under 'Accenture' consist of relevant employees at Accenture Strategy, Accenture Technology etc.
- In this report, a higher number does not equal more influence of alumni of specific business schools. The seniority of alumni, quality and diversity of roles play a bigger part. Unfortunately, this cannot be captured with exact accuracy given the paucity of time and subjectivity involved.
Disclaimer -
The figures at NMIMS Mumbai may be heavily influenced by the alumni of NMIMS who may have pursued a non-MBA undergraduate degree from NMIMS, though the filters applied during research will minimise such anomalies.
Additionally, it must be noted that IIM Kozhikode figures must be taken with a pinch of salt, considering that due to a technical glitch on LinkedIn, the absolute numbers are likely to be a misrepresentation of the actual figures of IIM-K alumni at these top-15 Consulting firms.
Company-Wise Slicing: Alumni Of Top Business Schools As A Percentage Of The Total Number Of Alumni Of Each Company
Cells for companies where %age of total alumni of a B-school exceeds 20% have been highlighted in Yellow.
Observations
IIM Bangalore and the Indian School of Business are the dominant B-schools in this Cluster. ISB Hyderabad, established almost 3 decades after IIM Bangalore, is as dominant (if not more dominant) when it comes to alumni representation across top consulting firms.
When it comes to the world's top consulting firms - McKinsey, BCG, and Bain - IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow and ISB alumni enjoy the maximum representation, with a whopping 50% of the alumni at Bain from IIM Bangalore, one of the few Indian management institutes where Bain & Company hires from.
IIM Lucknow, MDI and SPJIMR have decent representation across all companies in this report, while MICA and SIBM Pune are on the other end of the spectrum with minimal alumni representation across all companies.
School-Wise Slicing: Alumni of Top Business Schools As A Percentage Of Overall No. Of Alumni Of Respective B-Schools
Cells for B-schools where %age of alumni at a particular company exceeds 15% has been highlighted in Yellow.
Observations
Deloitte emerges as the largest recruiter in this Cluster of business schools. Additionally, EY, Accenture and KPMG are also some of the largest recruiters, seeing significant representation of alumni across 40-50% of the B-schools in this report. Just over 35% of the total number of IIM Bangalore alumni in this report are working at one of the 3 MBB firms, similar to the figures at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta, while less than 1/4th of the total number of ISB alumni in this report work at either of the 3 global management consulting firms.
New entrants MICA and SIBM Pune enjoy a fair representation across at least 30% of the companies in this report.
Majority of alumni in this report (~80%) at NMIMS Mumbai work as Consultants at one of the Big 4 of Accounting, followed by alumni of SPJIMR (~75%).
Once again, Alvarez & Marsal, Oliver Wyman, EY-Parthenon, Roland Berger and Arthur D. Little are top consulting firms that have minimal number of alumni working with them across business schools in Cluster 2.
Methodology
B-School & Company Selection
The various 'top business schools' in this report have been picked up from the
InsideIIM MBA Rankings for 2019. The various companies in this report are the Top-15 companies from our report on the
Most Desirable Consulting Firms of 2018/2019.
Cluster-wise Segmentation
In order to ensure that the alumni base of the various business schools are comparable and not vastly different, we segmented the 18 business schools in this report into 2 clusters: Pre-1966 and Post-1966. As there was no top B-school established between 1965 and 1973, the cut-off year chosen for dividing the schools is taken to be 1965.
The following business schools have been considered for this report:
MICA Ahmedabad and SIBM Pune are new entrants in this series and are two of India's most desirable business schools with a rich history and a relatively large alumni base, having been established decades ago.
Limitations Of The Report
As mentioned at the beginning, certain limitations of the research process prevent us from arriving at conclusions with pin-point accuracy. Some of the major limitations are:
· Not everyone is on LinkedIn: B-school alumni may not necessarily have registered on LinkedIn, therefore not giving a comprehensive overview of the actual figures of alumni concentration at some of the world's most well-known and reputed Consulting companies. For instance, IIM Bangalore has had 44 batches that have graduated since 1973. Even if we consider a modest average batch size of 100 across 44 batches, with 20% of students of every batch opting for Consulting roles, the number is still greater than what LinkedIn suggests.
It is also possible that those on LinkedIn may not necessarily update their profiles, thereby giving erroneous or incomplete employment data.
· Not everyone is a B-school student: Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not allow one to filter out MBA graduates from the crowd, and therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between MBA alumni and those who have pursued a certificate course, a short-term duration programme, or summer interns at the companies mentioned in this report. Additionally, for institutes such as NMIMS Mumbai that offer multiple courses, there are chances of errors in attempting to distinguish between NMIMS alumni who have pursued undergraduate programmes, and those who have pursued a PGDM programme.
If you liked this, you may also be interested in reading the 2018 Alumni Report series.
How can we improve this report? Please let us know in the comments below. We look forward to your honest and valuable feedback.