Yes, any B-school can sign up by sending an email. They may contact Placement Chairperson at IIM-A for further details.

The details have to be collected from recruiters. IIM-A has data for 204 PGP students in the exhaustive format out of the 305 students seeking campus placement. For PGP-ABM in 2011 program, all recruiters have shared the data. We expect that with time more and more recruiters would start valuing transparency and hence give data. A recruiter which gives data to IIMA can not refuse data to another B-School.

The audit gives believability. Otherwise anyone can (and does) report anything that they want. Hence audit is mandatory. However, the standard does not prescribe any specific auditor. Individual B-Schools can identify and select their own auditors. Currently, IIMA has appointed Brickwork Ratings as its Auditor.

The audited data can be put on websites and can be used in ads. We have set up a website devoted to Indian Placement Reporting Standards. It would host reports from all signatory B-Schools at one location.

B Schools can share the reports or parts of it in any forum that the school wishes.

The reporting is mandatory for the signatories.

The dedicated website will allow uploading of reports from B-Schools. It would thus be a one point of contact for sharing information across B Schools.

Regarding the concern about some recruiters not giving details, IIMA has received detailed salary data for about two-thirds of its recruiters for 2011 placements. This is obviously not a full data set but is promising for the very first year. We think the majority of recruiters believe that being transparent is good business sense and students may select a transparent offer over an offer which just quotes a CTC. As of now, IIM-A salary data for 2011 is calculated only on the data points for which we have auditable data.

Note that recruiters would not be asked for the detailed break up according to the 7 different heads listed. We are reporting (i) Basic + Additional guaranteed cash component (ii) one time payment and (iii) maximum of variable component. The addition of these three components is the Maximum Earning Potential. So we are asking for just the separation of guaranteed cash from the one-time and variable components. This is not too difficult for a firm to share.