I wish I could have taken part in this. And the won the contest, so I could get to schmooze with Big Bill, the Big Chief at Microsoft Corporation. But that’s just wishful thinking, so let’s get on with it. I am talking about the "Code 4 Bill" talent hunt here, launched by Microsoft India. Mr Gates himself announced the contest during his tour of discovery to India last month. "Code 4 Bill" is aimed at identifying India’s best student technologists.

The winner of the talent hunt will get an opportunity to work directly with Gates’ technical assistants team for one full year. They will also get an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge product development and innovations by working directly with Microsoft’s Product Development and Research teams.

And there appear to be a whole bunch of young pistols out there who are willing to do battle to "Code 4 Bill". In fact, 20,000 of them, when registrations closed on January 18, according to Microsoft. It said the contest comprises four stages. In the first stage, students were required to register for the contest and solve three online technical challenges. The top 10 per cent based on the cumulative scores at the end of the first stage will move to the next stage and undergo face-to-face interviews with an interview panel comprising of Microsoft executives. Twenty students from the second stage will then be shorlisted for the next stage and will get an opportunity to intern with Microsoft India. Based on the feedback obtained by them during this stage, five of these twenty participants will move to the fourth stage. During the fourth stage, the five students will face a series of challenges administered/conceived by Mr Gates’ Technical Assistant Team, and based on the scores at the end of this stage, one out of these five contestants will be selected to work with Mr Gates’ technical team in the US for a period of one year.

While the recent Assocham study may have revealed that more than 90 per cent of Indian CEO’s still feel that Indian business schools had a lot of ground to cover to join the league of the best in class like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was no let-up in the deluge of job offers for MBA graduate students this year.

Global leaders like, Infosys, TCS, IBM and Wipro have made 206 job offers to 121 MBA students from the 2004-2006 batch of the Xavier Institute of Management in Bhubaneswar or XIMB, reported to be one of the most technology intensive campuses in India.

No wonder then, with an average of 1.7 offers per student, the average salary offered to the MBA students this year touched Rs 7.12 lakhs per annum, as against Rs 5.24 lakhs per annum last year. Of all offers made, 20 were pre-placement offers with the highest domestic salary of Rs 9 lakhs per annum being offered by ATOS Origin, followed by JP Morgan, with an offer of Rs 8.6 lakhs per annum. On the international front, OLAM International made the highest offer of $85,000 per annum.

Companies like Infosys (26 offers), TCS (14), IBM (11), Wipro (10), JP Morgan (6), GenPact (10), Mindtree Consulting (7) and Ernst and Young (6), made multiple offers.

The IT sector, which amassed 34 per cent of the batch, was once again the largest recruiter, followed by consultancy firms at 22 per cent, the manufacturing sector at 16 per cent and the banking, finance and FMCG sectors amassing 10 per cent each. Last year, 59 companies participated in the XIMB placement process, out of which 14 companies had to return empty handed. The highest lateral offers then were $84,000 by Sierra Atlantic, Rs 9 lakhs from Wipro Technologies and Rs 7.4 lakhs by HSBC AMC.