Thursday, November 29, 2007

Young managers going places

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The Faculty of Management Studies at Delhi University recently conducted summer placements for its students. With 70 leading companies participating, a whole lot of choices were available to the students.

The highlight was a 400 per cent increase in the number of international offers made by companies. While many new international companies participated in this year’s process, Indian heavyweights also made a host of international offers to studen ts for a variety of roles overseas.
As many as 20 international offers were made to the students pursuing the two full-time programmes: 91 in MBA, and 42 in MBA-MS (Management of Services).
The financial sector continues to lure students in large numbers and as much as 17 per cent of the batch opted for profiles with leading banks.

“The summer internship programme at FMS provides students with an ideal platform to explore the various verticals and domains. We help them make the right decision by offering them plenty of choices with respect to both companies and profiles. The summer placements at FMS this year have broken all past records. The number of international offers by multi-national companies and Indian ones has increased manifold,” said the convener of placements, Madhu Vij.

The FMS Dean stated that the summer internship was the “nursery for the future business leaders to bloom”.

“The type of assignments that FMS interns are being offered by the cream of the corporate world is quite astounding and reflects great faith in the capabilities of our students,” he added.
Vimal Thorat, a reader in the Hindi Department at Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi, has been appointed coordinator of the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Chair on Social Change and Development.

The broad objective of the Chair is to work towards dissemination of ideas and thoughts of Dr. Ambedkar in the areas of administration, Constitutional studies, human rights, religion and philosophy.

The Chair will also undertake research and development programmes in these areas and focus on developing appropriate methodologies to pave the way for Dr. Ambedkar’s ideas as policy instrument.

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, will be conducting a special workshop in December for middle and senior managers of corporate houses and government organisations on “Corporate social responsibility and sustainable business”.

This training will sensitise corporate managers to various issues of CSR and expose them to international developments in sustainable business management.

The workshop, to be held from December 18 to 20, will cover topics like Institutional Environment and Business, Concept of Sustainability: the new broad agenda, Dimensions of Sustainability, Business Ethics and Public private partnership.

The J K group of companies is the latest among corporate houses venturing into academics with the setting up of a Rs.45-crore B-school at Gurgaon.

The institution will initially take up MBA programmes and later expand to other areas like marketing, finance, information technology and international business.

It will also include short-term courses in diverse areas like logistics and supply chain, marketing of financial services, rural marketing, mall management, distribution and sales and brand management.

The wi-fi-enabled campus would also include a state-of-the-art library, computer centre, an auditorium and hostels for boys and girls.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Summer bounty for IIM-A students

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It’s not just the post graduate students (PGPs) who opt for summer placements in consultancy firms.

This year, 21 per cent of students at the Post Graduate Programme in Agri Business Management (PGP-ABM) at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) opted for consulting companies for the summers. The batch has preferred working with agri and food retail sectors in the past.

This year, consultancy major PricewaterhouseCoopers and knowledge banking and agri-consulting firm YES Bank came to IIM-A to offer consulting positions. A total of 17 companies participated in the summer placement process of ABM programme for a batch of 25 students.

Other new entrants this season were global agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus, Miebach Logistics, Glaxo Smith Kline, Aditya Birla Group for their retail venture, Britannia, Nandan Biomatrix and Claris Lifesciences.

Regular recruiters like RPG, Godrej, Marico, ITC, ICICI Bank and ICICI Prudential continued their association this year as well with the ABM students who undergo common academic module with the PGP programme for the first year of study.

Around 27 per cent of the students preferred retail companies, 21 per cent of the students opted for consulting, 21 per cent for supply chain, 13 per cent for finance while 4 per cent opted for market research.

“With RPG’s growth story and the retail expansion, we find very valuable talent for the future leadership positions from the students of IIM Ahmedabad Agri-Business Management,” said Arvind N Agrawal, president, Corporate Development and HR , RPG Group.

Lately, IIM-A agri-business managers have interested companies in the food retail sector. Projects offered to the students included positions in supply-chain management, retailing, agri and food consulting, finance, market research and strategy formulation. The students had, on an average, about 2 offers to choose from.

Piyush Kumar Sinha, chairperson, Placement Committee of IIM-A, said that a larger number of companies expressed their keenness to offer summer projects, and there was a hike in average stipend; but what delighted students was an opportunity to work on high profile live projects.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

CATch the confusion

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Every year, Common Admission Test (CAT), for the IIMs and various other B-schools, manages to keep everyone wondering about the format of its question paper. Be it the total number of questions, marks allotted per question or varying difficulty levels of different sections, CAT has enough permutations to baffle aspirants. But it is not only the aspirants, even the four popular coaching institutes (IMS, PT, CL and TIME) are as puzzled. In a reality check done on November 19 to see what the answer keys of different coaching institutes had in store, presented huge variations in the answer keys.

These four institutes train more than half of the total number of CAT aspirants every year and therefore answer keys of these institutes were referred. This year’s CAT had 75 questions and when answer keys were compared it was found that answers for 19 questions differed. This accounts for more than 25% of the total number of questions. So a candidate calculating his or her CAT score will either have four sets of score cards, per coaching institute basis, or will simply not be able to get a final score. Of course there will be one answer key that will have minimum errors, or may be none, amongst the four in it but even then the other three will certainly have errors.

This is an area of concern and a pressing need to address this. Further analysis revealed that the language section had 14 such questions while Data Interpretation had four and Quant section had one such question (refer to the table). Pre-empting the pattern of the CAT paper has been the dream of every coaching institute and this is understandable considering the nature of the exam that emphasises on ‘on your toes’ thinking. But when it comes to solving a CAT paper and providing students with the right answer, isn’t it time that top brains of all these coaching institutes sit together to arrive at a consolidated answer key, after a thorough discussion and analysis. This will help lakhs of students strategising for their other examinations and will also put an end to this wide-spread confusion.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Unfolding of an educational revolution

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Slowly but certainly a quiet revolution is taking place. India has experienced, encountered and lived with several revolutions. Beginning with industrial revolution about a hundred years ago, which today is thriving, to the green revolution, to the white revolution, to IT revolution to India standing at the threshold of educational revolution. Education for achievement and performance, to education as a means for job and occupation to now education as a learning process for a holistic development and growth of an individual.

In small ways beginning with and few learning institutions the focus is on perspectives in addition to skill building, philosophical understanding in addition to analytical abilities, a process of learning in addition to memorizing and exams and most important to engage and relate to the whole person. Here the student learns to integrate thoughts (knowledge) behavior (including emotions and feelings) and actions. (Educational institution of such a nature focuses on the processes of growth, makes the learning interactive and participative, involves the various constituencies viz students, teachers, administration, staff and the external environment in a coherence, convergent and vibrant setting. This means there is time space and people who discover values to live by, who engage with each other, groups and systems with respect and dignity, who learn to make tough choices and not compromises and who work with self discipline as well as rigor of learning which creates excellence in innovators and entrepreneurs. Such a process has begun in India.

Such learning institutions are taking small steps towards creating new knowledge relevant for times, evolving new frameworks and theories, understanding the global context and insights into the strengths of the socio – cultural collective psyche which can be mobilized for a learning process where the individual student and the teacher discover the magic of the learning experience and translate into wisdom.

Monday, November 19, 2007

CAT Cutoffs: What various institutes predict

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Soon after CAT was out of the bag, India’s top-tier management entrance institutes like IMS Learnings, Career Launcher, TIME and Career Forum got busy in making predictions on what cutoffs are likely to get you a call from the IIMs.

Overall Cutoff
IMS Learning Center : 100+
Career Launcher : 102-107
TIME : 88-92
Career Forum : 123+
MBA Guru : 96
Professional Tutorials : 105-115


Read More…

Saturday, November 17, 2007

IIM-B completes Summer Placements 08; over 110 students to go overseas

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It just took four days for Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) to place its batch of 249 students for summer internships in some of world’s leading companies.

What’s more, over hundred IIM-B students will go overseas for their summer internships.
Informs IIM-B, “The entire batch of 249 students was placed within a span of just 4 days with 132 students (more than 50% of the batch) being placed in Slot 0.” Slot 0 witnessed firms offering profiles in investment banking, management consulting, private equity and general management. Major recruiters on Slot 0 included investment banking giants like Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Consulting majors like Bain & Co, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co, AT Kearney, etc.

Across all slots, the sector-wise breakup for students is Investment Banking (19%), Private Equity (11%), Management Consulting (15%), Financial Services (16%), Marketing and General Management (28%), Systems (8%) and Asset Management (3%). A noticeable trend in the summer placements has been the number of students interning abroad with the number crossing 110 (101 last year) this year.

IIM-B says that a significant feature this year has been the entry of Private Equity players at IIMB. Blackstone Group, one of the world’s leading Private Equity firms recruited from IIMB for the first time. Other PE firms flocking to campus include ChrysCapital, Greater Pacific Capital, Goldman Sachs PE, IDG Ventures, Temasek Holdings, etc. In addition to these, Asset Management & portfolio management firms like Franklin Templeton, Lotus AMC, HSBC Securities & Roulac visited IIMB to tap the potential of the Indian market.

Consulting majors like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, CapGemini continued to visit IIMB. Arthur D Little visited IIMB for the summers for the first time. Strategic Management roles were offered by TAS, Lodha Group, Aditya Birla Group, Shell, IBM, etc.

Happy with summer placement results, IIM-B says, “The fantastic placements are a reflection of the diversity of students on campus. The institute boasts of students with prior experience in Investment Banks at foreign locations and leading consults like Bain & Co, Inductis, etc. Several students with prior entrepreneurial experience have chosen IIMB for honing their managerial skills. The recruiters were highly impressed with the entire placement process.”
Mr. Sharad, Managing Director of JP Morgan New York, commended the placement committee on the management of the entire process.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Stay-cool tips for all CATs

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The rigour is over, now relax till you get the test paper on Sunday morning.

In the countdown to Sunday’s common admission test (CAT) — the entrance test for the six Indian institutes of management (IIMs) and a host of other B-schools — the training institutes have issued a chill pill advisory to students.

“We are asking our students to take it easy before the exam,” said Kaushik Kapoor of Erudite, a training institute specialising in B-school entrance tests.

As de-stressing is a must in the last hours ahead of the two-and-a-half hour examination, Erudite is screening films — primarily comic films — in its classrooms.

With complaints of sleepless nights and nervousness pouring in at various training institutes, the faculty members are dishing out de-stress suggestions to students.

At the Triumphant Institute of Management Education (Time), students have been specifically asked not to spend excessive time with books.

“A movie or a game of cricket are great de-stressing tools at this time,” Jaydeep Singh Chowdhury of Time.

Vijay Mishra, a B. Com graduate — set to take his first CAT on Saturday — is following the instructions of his faculty members.

“I did my revisions today. Tomorrow, I intend going out and watching movies,” said Mishra, all set for the toughest test of his life.

Richa Malhotra is aware of the degree of difficulty in the test, where she will have to compete with over 230,000 students from across country. Around 11,000 students will write the test in Calcutta.

“I have spent a year preparing for CAT. So much has gone into the preparation. Obviously, I am a bit tense,” admitted Richa.

Unnecessary tension may affect performance, warned Kapoor. “Every year, there is some surprise element in the question paper. It is impossible to predict the pattern change. So, the best strategy is to keep your cool and deliver your best,” he summed up.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Take account: CAs close in on MBAs in salaries

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AHMEDABAD: MBA finance grads watch out, CAs are inching closer in terms of pay packages. In the latest round of placements of CAs, held last month, average salaries have shot up to almost Rs 6 lakh per annum. The average salary of CAs reached to a new high of Rs 5.94 lakh compared with Rs 4.79 lakh in February-March, 2007. Of late, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has been working hard to prepare its members to compete with MBA students.

The institute has also introduced changes in its curriculum to groom new students as per the changing scenario. In his recent message to its members, ICAI president Sunil Talati said, “I must say that the new breed of young students are so smart and intelligent that the number of students passing out in final examination and becoming our members is increasing every year. This is a good sign. It is not that the examination papers are easy, or results are liberal; it is in fact a sign that new young intelligent and talented students are joining our profession appreciating the new curriculum.” The campus placements were not limited to about 100-odd students like typical B-schools.

There were as many as 1,151 students recruited out of 1,823 students who participated in the September-October campus placements. There were 101 companies comprising 252 interview panels participated at 19 centres in campus interviews, organised by ICAI. “A number of students could not get the job profile and company of their choice since we do not allow students to appear in more than six interviews. However, they will be able to find the suitable opportunity through our online platform from where headhunters can access to our data base,” said ICAI chairman of committee for members in industry Uttam Prakash Agarwal.

Not only banks and financial institutes but a number of IT, energy, telecom, engineering, FMCG and aviation companies also participated. Landmark Gulf Group offered the highest package of Rs 12 lakh and recruited 17 CAs for international postings. Standard Chartered offered anywhere between Rs 7 and Rs 11 lakh to 11 CAs. Citi Bank, Britannia Industries, ICICI Bank and ITC too made some of the most attractive offers to fresh CAs. While ICICI Bank recruited as many as 303 students, Reliance Industries recruited 71, Infosys 47 and Vedanta 45 CAs. ICAI conducted campus placements at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Vadodara, Bhilai, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Ernakulam, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Pune and Surat.