I'd written a piece titled Bschool salaries: A reality check two years ago. Am looking to update it now and want to hear from you guys out there who've just passed out of bschool: is the spurt in salaries for real?
IIM A has put out an average domestic salary figure of Rs 17.85 lakhs p.a. this year. That's 40% more than the year 2007 (Rs 13.6 lakhs). And the 2007 figure was 40% more than the previous year 2006! (Rs 9.72 lakhs)
IIM A is only an indicative example, the same trend is seen all across bschools. Just a quick example: Shailesh J mehta SOM has declared an average salary of Rs 13.96lakhs p.a. in 2008 (44%jump over last year)
Is it really possible that bschool salaries are growing 40% y-o-y? I'm sure at least some of it is thanks to creative accounting?? What are the latest white lies placement committees are telling to stay ahead in the salary race?
Drop me a line at rashmi_b@yahoo.com if you'd like to share what you know. Especially the component of variable pay... If the 'average' is Rs 17.85 lakhs p.a. what I want to know is what's your monthly take home pay?
This info is especially relevant in light of the fee hike by IIMs! The idea is not to point fingers but give aspirants a sense of what lies ahead - minus the hype.
Hi thr!
ReplyDeleteRather than stirring the emotions of the b-school community by saying "white lies placement committees are telling ", it's the companies which need to be checked on their CTCs & more importantly the declining ratio of take-home cash salary v/s CTC. Placecoms simply report the 'Average CTCs offered'. The thing to note is that it is 'COST' to company and not the salary & this is where most companies try to bluff the b-school junta.
E.g. On a CTC of 16.15 lpa in a fin. company this year, the avg. take home monthly cash is just 52K + one-time year-end bonus of around 4 lacs + one time joining bonus of 75K.
It is important that who is to be blamed, placecoms for simply reporting the CTCs given to them or the companies for including some funny components in their CTCs?
Inside a b-school, the students grill the employers enough to get an idea of the 'real salaries' (this obviously depends on the bargaining power of the school which in turn is dependent on the reputation of the school in the industry) before inviting the companies for placements.
The real solution of providing clear picture to the outside junta, devoid of any hype, lies in hands of companies by providing clear-cut break-up of the CTC, AS WELL AS on the b-schools by taking the initiative of reporting figures like 'Average Fixed Salary', 'Average Bonus'.
But in case of b-schools, who will start this, is interesting. The onus lies on the market leaders like IIM A,B & C, ISB. But I doubt that this is going to happen soon because the kind of publicity, airtime & hype the media is giving to the CTCs is enormous & who wants to be left out of this. E.g. Almost all TV channels like to verbally announce the dollar (international offers) salaries in INR. An $85,000 offer gets announced as Rs. 34 lpa offer by TV channels only and yeah, without the b-school prodding it to report it in that way. This year, even a highly reputed economic-business newspaper published a report with this kind of headline (converting $ to INR). So much for eye-balls!
and...
Yes, the CTCs have risen 40-45% from last year in some b-schools, no lies in this.
cheers!!
SHEKHAR
a passing out b-skooler (06-08 batch) :-)
Consider same lies beneath IT jobs too..
ReplyDeleteSo, I always asked: 'How much I will get in hand?'
Its not just salaries being offered to b-schoolers is misleading... m a techi and the companies that came to ma college too presented the same story.. offering such a nice CTC but actual monthly cash sucks!!
ReplyDeleteIIMs have to live with the image of ever increasing salaries - and they are plainly playing to the media's fantasy - for showcasing 40% hikes.
ReplyDeleteI guess nobody will become the RAT of their own institute. We may whine inside. But we are still a family to the outside world :) I still hope you achieve your objective.
cheers.
IIM salaries are always mysterious and misleading..
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Thanks,
Trojan
this is a very interesting discussion.. having passed out ~10 years ago, i see the placement circus every year with ever increasing fanfare.. i hang my head in shame for such ostentatious, misleading display of money.. how more gawdy and uncouth can one be.. utter shame
ReplyDeletehere is my experience.. i am telling based on my work in India and US and having seen top schools grads in both countries..
domestic salaries: generous assumptions.. however the instis ensure that they can back it up.. so e.g. they will take the highest amount possible of performance bonus (which no one gets).. this is more important in eye-popping consulting / i banks where top bonus can be as much as 100% of base salary.. so right there chop off 25-30% of quoted figures..
second big thing is accommodation and all other random allowances .. so e.g. in Bombay at a decent location (say Bandra) monthly rent for a 2 BHK for 2 persons will be calculated as 2.5-3Lpa per person.. take that off as the HRA will be peanuts if you dont take company accommodation.. also take away 33% in taxes (agreed its not anyone's fault).. also take 10% in intangibles: training, morale etc
so overall my take is with a quoted figure of 18 lpa.. the regular take home will be ~5 lpa post tax with accommodation and a bonus of 1-2 lpa post tax.. so say ~40K per month and acco in nice place and 1.5 L bonus.. not bad at all by any standards for a 23 yr old with 0 experience in real world.. but prosperity is a relative term as is happiness..
overseas salaries: super generous assumptions but again the instis can back up.. the top figures quoted (1.5 cr !!! for crissakes) is way of the charts for even a harvard / wharton topper with 6 yrs of top notch experience and an ivy leage undergrad..
lets break it down.. say average is 140K (again very high for an Indian school grad with 2 yrs of Indian software experience ).. but even then lets break it down
first fluctuation by cities: heavy. I will take a 120K job in Ohio over 180 K job in Manhattan.
Second even in 140 K there is a bonus built in.. take away 25%.. benefits will be another 10-15K (US healthcare and services are costly, dudes).. tax is 25% (rough cut for unmarried).. stock options will be ~15-20K.. sign on bonus will be 10-15K.. so overall takehome will be 50-60K post tax (not bad at all in a cheap city).. but if you are in NYC / Bay area be prepared to live like an everyday joe, which is not bad as compared to other places in the world but again i veer towards relativity
so overall.. quite some creativity in all these numbers.. sincerely hope that Indian schools tone down the rhetoric and stop looking like a complete fool to the alumni / insiders..
to IIMs / other so called top instis: stop projecting that MBA is some god's gift.. it is just another degree and life starts after IIMs placement not ends with it.. get a grip all ye wannabes and newly minted ones!!
heres something that all mba grads already know...
ReplyDeletealmost all b-schools (including iims) use some kind of creative accounting or other... this was one thing i didn't know before getting into one myself... the most common scam is with the average pay figures...
this avg pay that is shown is not the actual pay people get... to calculate the average pay these b schools consider all the offers that were made and not the offer that was chosen by student... so for example if a college has 50 students and 100 offers were made... to calculate average we would sum up the pay of all the offers and divide by 50... this by no means is the correct status... very easily the institute is bloating its avg pay to almost twice the actual amount...
I know one of my frind Mr Nambiyar
ReplyDeletefrom iim is jobless in U.S.A
www.material-spiritual
Too keep up with the 'times', companies have started using this CTC concept.
ReplyDeleteCTC could mean to include anythign from the rent for your office cubicle, electricity bill for your desk to free gym, and even the air one breathes in the company campus.
The "take home" component, has increased too, but not by such a huge margin.
wLot of B school salary figures are def. misleading. B schools see that they take the maximum figure quoted by the company, say if the CTC is between 14-16 lacs, they will take 16 lacs in the calculation for avg. And its a no brainer that training costs will be a part of the ctc, but not as bad as cost of toilet paper etc, but say cost of education modules/training modules given. More than the average, the median according to me is the best indicator..
ReplyDeleteRaghav
MBA 06-08
PS: Why dont u allow wordpress users to comment..I was @ blogger Ive shifted now..gets irritating..
my brother came out of IIML being a fresher.. he was offered.. 12lpa plus 100k as joining bonus.. in isb u find people with even ten years of job experience.. i dont wonder.. them being offered with huge packets..
ReplyDeleteI like your blog.
ReplyDeleteRashmi
ReplyDeleteI think someone also needs to act on the B-grade B-Schools mushrooming all over the country who are wrecking havoc with careers of thousands of students. There are probably thousands of small time B-schools that have come up in the country with atrocious facilities, zero value addition to the students , and shameless money-making mechanisms.
We recently decided to recruit our frontline sales team from some of these institutes, and visited quite a few of them in last month. We made several shocking observations. JUst to summarise a few-
1. Campus is nonexistant. One floor of a building runs as makeshift campus with 2-3 classrooms, one severely cramped library, a crappy faculty room that can sit 2-3 people at best and a spacious Director's cabin! And this scene is replicated in several places. In one place we found a management school sandwiched between a Chinese takeway on ground floor and an insurance office on 2nd floor. And some institutes do have better campus , with one small building totally occupied by the school . Many of them do maintain a swanky facade within limited space..but those are clearly to lure the prospective students and their parents
2.The fees in these schools are shocking!!! And keep increasing with each passing batch. And all for nothing! No benefit of a formal management education is reaped by any of the students- they work at par with graduates!
3.Along with the fees , even these institutes have started to force the students to buy laptops. Surprisingly, most of the institutes do not provide round the clock internet facility. So the logic that laptops will help students in their research/project works falls flat on its face. Most such schools have a 1/2 hour "Compter Class" when net is accessed , in a regulated quota-system.In some places, the students actually go to cyber cafes for browsing/ printouts etc
4.Hardly any constructive projects/case studies are conducted seriously in most of these institues. The facutly take things easy.
5.In case of many students , the institutes fail to place them even for summer placements and the students are left to go door to door for bagging a summer project
6. Library facilities are nearly non-existant. In ew places we found libraries well-stocked. But the access to the students again is limited- in some cases, more expensive books are not even given to the students!
7. There is absolutely nothing in the way of selection criteria for students. ANybody who can afford the money can enroll into the course. Thus the overall quality of the batches are diluted- the more talened students who couldnot make it to IIMs get a raw deal. And those who are simply not good enough to be an MBA gets a degree for whatever its worth, never makes anything out of it and gets swindled out of a few lakhs in the process. There are students with terrible communication skills, no intelligence or aptitude and still pursuing a management course!!
8.Most of the students who have completed the full course are ill-prepared for the roles that a management proffisional should ideally fulfill. The education seems to make no difference at all- even in case of some of the brighter students. A pretty clear indication to the quality of education ( or lack of it ) provided in these hell-holes.
9. And finally, that mysterious thing called Final Placements and CTCs. Hardly any placement opportunities are provided. Most do not have a proper campus to conduct campus interviews. In almost all cases ,there is hardly any concern or urgency among the managemnet or even the placement cell to get the students placed. Many companies like Insurance, Banks , DSA/DSTs etc recruit their low-level sales team from these institutes as the students from these schools are cheap labour for them. With the kind of investment made by the students/parents, most join these dead-end jobs also out of compulsion. The salaries are a pittnace. But speak to the school authorities and you will hear figures like 4lakh, 5 lakh, 6.5 lakh etc as avg CTC. Scratch the surface and the student actually gets only 10-12K per month net take home( those who are fortunate enough, most do not qualify for 5-fig sums). Rest is put in there as a combination of allowances(which often are a fiction ), incentives(which are conditional and subject to changes), and even the reimbursemnets like mobile and conveyance (which is actually a very unfair practise, esp for sales professionals who incur a heavy mobile / conveyance cost). When we actually breifed some of the placement coordinators on our CTC, they were a bit taken aback that we do not include any variable component in that!
I do not understand how these B-schools can still continue to be i existence and actually proliferate and prosper- minting money by duping the students and parents(most of whom are iddle-class people who struggle to cough p the astronomical fees). Some action is surely due???? Is there something we can do???
They are far from truth, but not that far. Being a recent pass out, 2 yrs into teh industry, and closely monitoring the placement scenarios, I have developed a rule of thumb that the fixed part in any of the quoted figures is 2/3rd of the quoted CTC, which would include minimum assured bonus and joining bonuses. The lowest salaries typically are about 50% of this salaries.
ReplyDeleteso 18lpa has a fixed component of 12lpa, which transalates to about 70K take home per month. Teh lowest in tehe campus woudl be about 50% of 12 ie 6lpa, which translates into approx 40k pm
The days have actually bettered in the sense that the bogus reporting is not that high and does not typically include car loan etc arbot things as it used to be 4-5 yrs ago. Salaries for frsher are typically seeing 30% y-o-y jump.
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Maybe you should check out the INSEAD carrer report, as they call it. One of the most comprehensive and transparent placement reports that I have come across. Maybe the Indian schools need to adapt something simlar.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.insead.edu/mba/careers/docs/2006_Careers_report.pdf
Sidharth.(S.P. Jain-2006)