Sunday, August 17, 2008

IIMs prefer students with work experience

KOLKATA: In line with what has long been a trend across global B-schools, the IIMs are looking at more experienced candidates for their MBA programmes. These students, the institutes claim, bring in important attributes like out-of-the-box thinking and communication skills to the table.

At IIM Lucknow (IIM-L), the total number of students with work experience in the 2008-10 batch is 274 out of the batch of 307 or 89.25% against 50.41% last year, when 122 out of 242 students came with some experience.

“Experienced students change the entire dynamics of learning,” IIM-L director Devi Singh told ET. This time around, at IIM-L, 16 students have experience of less than a year, 67 between one and two years, 82 students between two and three years and 83 of over three-and-half years. Only 33 students have no work experience.

In IIM Calcutta’s 2008-10 batch, 40% of the batch have work experience of up to two years and 23% above two years, aggregating 63% against 60% in the 2007-09 batch.

“We are paying increasing importance to people with work experience,” said IIM-C dean (programme initiatives) Saibal Chattopadhyay. “Ideally, only 15-20% of an MBA class should comprise freshers. Though we have no intention of cutting down drastically on the number of freshers, over time we intend to gradually move towards a far higher proportion of experienced people.” He added, “Feedback from recruiters suggest we should have more students with some degree of experience. However, more than three years of experience can be a problem, as those students are difficult to mould.”

At IIM Bangalore, it’s the same story. Experienced students account for about 75.3% of the 2008-10 batch compared to 71.8% in case of the 2007-09 batch.

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