In the game of talent acquisition at business schools, consulting firm Deloitte has a formidable strategy. Much of it is focused on building the campus brand to stay relevant to the ever-changing perceptions of the students.“There is a lot of work we do in our engagement at campuses which is about influencing the minds of the youngsters in the market,” said SV Nathan, chief talent officer at Deloitte. And the strategy seems to be working. Deloitte emerged at the top in ET’s survey of top recruiters at India’s leading business schools, having hired 282 grads from the class of 2016 from the business schools the survey covered.Now in its sixth year, the ET Top Recruiters survey was based on data collated from 26 leading Indian business schools.These are: IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, XLRI, MDI Gurgaon, IIFT, FMS-Delhi, SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, IMT Ghaziabad, IIM Trichy, IIM Rohtak, IIM Ranchi, IIM Udaipur, IMT Ghaziabad, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur, WeSchool, NITIE Mumbai, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Goa Institute of Management, Institute of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University (earlier FMS-BHU), and TA Pai Management Institute.B-school hiring at Deloitte has witnessed a growth of 30-40 per cent over the last five years. MBAs are key talent, said Deloitte’s Nathan. “MBAs are plug-and-play people. By virtue of strong foundation, MBAs are more industry-aware and hit the ground running,” Nathan said.About 50 per cent of these hires are women, but Nathan said, “We still need to up the game in gender diversity.”Besides Deloitte, the list of top five recruiters across these schools included Cognizant, ICICI Bank Infosys and Wipro . Sriram Rajagopal, senior vice-president of human resources at Cognizant, said, “We have been hiring MBAs in significant numbers since 2000 and have been visiting premier B-schools in India, North America, Europe and APAC as a preferred recruiter for high-growth and challenging career opportunities that we are known to provide. Over the last three years, we have hired more than 1,200 MBAs to help propel our business growth.”The company hires one MBA for every 20-25 technology professionals in the company. “Cognizant is perhaps the most aggressive hirer of MBA talent in the country. We continue to hire MBAs to meet the requirements of our rapid growth,” said Rajagopal.Across the institutes surveyed, Cognizant recruited 245 students from the class of 2016. The company had a global headcount of about 244,300 employees as of June 30, 2016.Management schools continue to be an important channel for selecting leaders for ICICI Bank, which ranked third in the survey. “Given our strategy to further entrench our leadership position in digital banking, we have also enhanced our focus on hiring from premier engineering campuses,” said TK Srirang, head of HR at ICICI Bank.The bank hired students from toptier management, engineering and law schools across the country. Infosys, which reshuffled its top deck some months ago, extended offers to over 650 students from B-schools in FY16, a number that has been consistent with its hiring volumes from last year.At the 26 B-schools surveyed, it hired 215 students. “Being an organisation that is consulting-led for a large part of our business, B-schoolers play a key role in understanding the client organisation, process, business and technology landscape, and suggest solutions that result in significant business outcomes. B-schoolers also play an important role in our pre-sales, proposal and solution building efforts,” said Binod Hampapur Rangadore, global head for talent and technology operations, Infosys.Despite IT industry body Nasscom saying that engineering campus hiring may fall for the first time since 2009, Infosys does not see a major shift in its hiring. “We do not foresee any significant changes in the hiring numbers. It will continue to be as per our business requirement and will likely be in line with the numbers from the last two years,” said Rangadore.As on June 30, 2016, Infosys has over 197,000 employees. For its part, Wipro is building a healthy sales talent and leadership pipeline through these hires. “MBA graduates with subject matter expertise from the technology, marketing, communication and human resources fields come with a holistic view of their respective area of specialisation and industry,” said Santosh Karagada, senior vice-president of human resources and global strategic hiring at Wipro.The company will absorb students in sales, marketing, pre-sales, business analyst and corporate function roles. The company has a workforce of over 170,000, serving clients across six continents.MBAs are key components of the growth strategy for global professional services company Accenture, which ranked sixth in the ET survey. “Our focus on hiring MBAs has always been a priority, along with other specialised talents as per our vertical requirements, said Parag Pande, managing director, human resources, Accenture India. “Accenture provides solutions to client businesses at the intersection of technology and strategy at a time when huge digital disruption is taking place. Business schools provide us top talent, which in turn are trained by us in areas of cutting-edge strategy, consulting and technology, in turn developing skill and acumen to develop futuristic solutions for our clients,” said Pande.The total headcount for Accenture in India is 140,000. At KPMG, hiring in the consulting practice grew 10 per cent over the last two years. “Our MBA hiring requirements have grown year-on-year, aligned to our business and talent needs,” said Shalini Pillay, head of people, performance and culture at the consultancy.While the pedigree of an institute is one of the considerations for KPMG in terms of offering roles, the firm relies on its assessment of the students’ skill sets in this process.“Our different businesses zero-in on the campuses they are keen to source talent from, based on the specific curriculum and course, relationships and alumnus and the competitive landscape. We do not have a straight-jacketed approach to sectors at this level of hiring. This allows our staff to work across industries and gain exposure.” Pillay said.This year, about 50 per cent of the campus hires at KPMG are women. The organisation has more than 18,000 employees in India. IBM India, which re-entered the top recruiters’ list after four years, hired more in FY16 than the previous year.While for some business lines and functions, internship is an important criteria, the company absorbs B-school students in client-facing roles like sales, pre-sales, business development or consulting roles.Some get to make a career in their functional roles, explains DP Singh, vice-president and HR head for IBM- India/south Asia. Over the last few years, the company has been stepping up its engagement with B-schools.“We have been working with top B-schools’ entrepreneurship cells to organise technology mentoring and conducting contests for students who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs/starting their own business ventures. The most recent example is a contest which was held at IIM Bangalore's flagship event – Eximus,” Singh said.Amazon, the lone ecommerce company in the list of top 10 recruiters in India in FY16, has seen a 140 per cent increase in MBA intake over the last two years. So, what explains Amazon’s numbers when the sector is going slow on hiring?“Amazon’s consistent performance over the last three years and our stellar performance in Q12016 clearly indicates that the tide is turning. Amazon’s focus on working backwards from customer needs and innovating on the three things that matter to customers — selection, convenience and price — is paying rich dividends,” said Raj Raghavan, director of human resources at Amazon India, which hired 201B-schoolers.The online marketplace, which was one of the biggest recruiters at the top-3 IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) said it has the culture of hiring superstars.”Besides educational qualifications, we look for smart, flexible and customer-obsessed candidates who can play a significant role in helping Amazon raise the bar for online shopping experience in India,” said Raghavan. In addition to hiring MBA students with degrees from prestigious institutes, the company has also recruited people with online MBA degrees. “We believe that talent should meet our hiring bar, irrespective of where they graduate from or which city,” he said. Amazon has close to 25,000 employees.Data collected by: Sreeradha D. Basu, Varuni Khosla, Prachi Verma Dadhwal, Brinda Dasgupta and Rica Bhattacharyya