Finance dominates IIM-Calcutta placements

The finance sector ruled the finalplacements process at the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) with renowned firms from the field making up 31.3 percent of the offers.

"IIM-Calcutta is known as the 'Finance Campus of India', and this year the finance sector contributed the largest number of offers, nearly 31.3 percent. Finance was closely followed by the consulting and marketing sectors," Pritish Gandhi, recruitmentcoordinator, IIM-C, told media persons here.

"International investment banks like UBS, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America hired students from IIM-C. Students have already received pre-placement offers (PPO) from firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland," said Gandhi.

"This year Japanese Investment Bank and Daiwa Securities recruited exclusively from IIM-Calcutta and extended offers to six students," said Gandhi

Consulting firms like Mckinsey and Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bain and Company and AT Kearney and Essex Lake Group also recruited exclusively from IIM-Calcutta during the March 3-7 final placement process.

"All 383 students who participated in the placement process had successfully received job offers by the end of the fifth day," said Gandhi.

For students with considerable work-experience, lateral placements in senior positions saw a huge increase of 57.6 percent in the number of offers, up from 92 last year to 145 this year.

More than 50 firms participated in the lateral placement process, including recruiters like Barclays Bank, Olam International, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Shell.

They hired in "unprecedented numbers" after modest hiring or completely giving a miss to placements during the recession period, said Gandhi.

The highlight of the lateral placement process was the participation of private equity firm Gaja Capital, which recruited exclusively from IIM-Calcutta and selected three students. Additionally, MCap Fund Advisors also visited the campus for lateral recruitments.

The IIM-Calcutta this year also introduced "deferred placements" process wherein students who want to pursue entrepreneurship, work in social sector, join a government organization involved in national service or pursue higher education are allowed to sign out of current placement process and join it anytime in the next 3 years.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/IIM/Finance_dominates_IIM-Calcutta_placements_13670/

Google to content farms: It's war

Google has set in motion the changes that it announced recently to combat "content farms"--companies that produce large amounts of inexpensive, search-engine-optimized content that have been frequently decried for their low quality.

But will there be sweeping changes in the way we view and navigate the Web? It's hard to tell just yet.

"In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking--a change that noticeably impacts 11.8 percent of our queries--and we wanted to let people know what's going on," Google said in a blog post last week. "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Part of this strategy involves a Chrome browser extension called Personal Blocklist.

But Demand Media, the recent IPO at the forefront of the "content farm" controversy, said last week that it's been unaffected by Google's algorithm change, so far. "It's impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term--but at this point in time, we haven't seen a material net impact on our Content and Media business," Demand Media executive vice president Larry Fitzgibbons said last night in a blog post. Demand Media, nevertheless, leaves open the possibility that its content could be affected in the future.

Indeed, Google said the changes may not be visible immediately, especially as the modifications to its algorithm are currently affecting only U.S. users. "We're very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it's a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results," the Google blog post explained. "We've been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we're working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results."

What's at stake for Google here is the fact that critics have said content farms are making search results less useful and less relevant. With pressure from the "social search" trend fueled by Facebook's success and from search rival Bing inching up in market share, this decision may be more pressing for Google than it appears at first glance.

Soource: http://www.zdnetasia.com/google-to-content-farms-it-s-war-62207115.htm

Google tech-head, Bluetooth inventor to address Mumbai students

Mumbai: Google's Chief Technology AdvocateMichael Jones, Bluetooth inventor Jaap Haartsen, and constructor of the world's tallest building William Baker will address thousands of students at the 'Techfest' organized by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay starting on Friday.

While Jones will speak about how Google developed Google Earth and Google Maps, Haartsen will talk about development of Bluetooth. A whopping 75,000 students are expected to participate in several events spanned over a period of three days starting on Friday.

Exhibitions like the Leonardo Da Vinci Robotics, Tech Connect and Open Vibe will be organized to showcase indigenous research activities at IIT-Bombay. 

"Genius that he was, Da Vinci had constructed mechanical flying birds during his last years. Reconstruction of two of his works will be exhibited for the first time at 'Techfest' by Niccolai-Techno Art Research Group from France," said Gajendra Dhaka, a student organizer. 

Several competitions like Full Throttle - modeled on the lines of rally racing, and Robowars, the inter-college combat robotics, promise to keep the thrill of students alive and kicking.IANS

source:http://indiaedunews.net/IIT/Google_tech-head,_Bluetooth_inventor_to_address_Mumbai_students_13297/