The first of the interviews will take place on November 12, 2010, informed an IIM Ahmedabad press statement.

“Based on the positive recruiter feedback for the cohort-based final placements in March 2010, and much internal deliberations, the cohort-based process was deemed the best way forward for the upcoming summer placements,” said student spokesman Mansi Chitalia.

“In the cohort process, companies will be divided into groups called ‘Cohorts’ based on multiple parameters such as roles, locations, salaries etc and several cohorts will be held in one Cluster. The cohorts would be scheduled based on the preference of the students. Interviews in the first cluster are scheduled to start from 12th November 2010 and will thereafter proceed on weekends until all the students are placed in the roles of their choice,” explained the press statement.

The cohort process is very student-friendly as it reduces the stress on the students and allows them more preparation time between clusters while making for a better match between student and the recruiter as they have longer interaction time to understand each other, says IIM Ahmedabad. The cohort-process replaces the ‘slot-based process’, wherein placements were concluded within 3-4 days in a high-pressure environment with interviews sometimes lasting barely a few minutes.

The cohort-process is not an original innovation of the IIMs, as several lower-rung b-schools have been conducting similar ‘rolling placement’ processes since years. However, IIMA has given additional structure to the process by scheduling it on the basis of student preferences and job categories.