B-school salaries to take a hit

International job offers at IIMs are also expected to dip.

The US investment banking crisis, compounded by the Lehman bankruptcy impact, is leaving its mark on the psyche of Indian B-school managements and students. Even the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) now expect a dip of around 15-20 per cent in the average salary levels, besides a drop in the international job offers on the campus for the 2009 batch.

“Foreign companies pay in foreign currencies, but with most of the international offers coming from investment banks the offers and salary levels are set to see a dip this placement season,” reasons a placement chairperson from one of the IIMs. He, however, is optimistic that international companies from the manufacturing sector have shown interest in recruiting students from the campus.

At the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, the institute expects it could face problem with lateral placements. The institute has already approached 15-20 new companies (which did not come on campus last year for recruitment) this year. Professor Madhu Vij, Corporate Relation and Placement Advisor, FMS, reasons: “One job in the BFSI sector creates four other jobs. It is a wait and watch time for the laterals. We expect that the profiles offered might be different and the salaries may be lower. Till now, 80-90 per cent of the companies are same as last year but for safekeepng, we have approached new companies with lesser exposure to the international market.” Sriharsha, a student at FMS, says that students with dual specialisations can opt for marketing and HR and the options in IT are likely to go down in lieu of the turmoil in the US market.

“The Indian market and economy seem still as attractive as last year and we expect more domestic companies to recruit students from the top-tier B-schools as international companies take a back seat. There could possibly be a reduced growth rate in the salaries offered, but we expect an increase in Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs) this year,” says Naveen Urmese, second year Post Graduate Diploma in Management at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB).

B-schools are now finding immense potential in consumer banking, retail, consulting, consumer durables and private equity, which are more viable career options than an I-bank. “Unlike around 40 per cent students from our institute taking up jobs at investment banks every year, this year the numbers will be drastically low since the requirement of manpower has gone down at I-banks.

Sectors like consumer durables, marketing, retail and consulting will get a big fillip this year,” says Madhusudan Karmarkar, area chair for finance at Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L).

“The US financial market is a challenge to the aspirations of B-school students currently. Some look up to these institutions as great places to work in. However, cycles come and go, and we need to have a long-term vision of such incidents.

Opportunities are now arising in the Asian financial markets. The fundamentals of Asia and India remain strong; they are the engines of growth driving the world economy forward,” says Devesh Dhar Dwivedi, from Indian School of Business (ISB).

The Lehmann and Merril Lynch debacle have certainly become a topic of discussion among students at management institutes. “There have been informal discussions going on during every class at the campus since the Lehman debacle. Of course, there are concerns, but there is no such panic among the students of finance,” says Pratik Ved, student co-ordinator at IIM, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

The premier institute of the country states that the events are not conclusive in nature and their impact on future hiring is uncertain at this stage. “We are not currently in a position to make a strong statement on how we believe these events are likely to impact us. IIM-A has a large and diverse pool of recruiters and therefore, the status of a few firms is unlikely to impact the opportunities that IIM-A students can expect from our placement process.

Our student pool is also quite diverse and students looking for a long-term career in finance continue to have a preference for the sector as they are unlikely to base a long term career decision on a short-term view of the market,” says Mihir Lal, placement co-ordinator, IIM-A.

Interestingly, the volatile state of the financial markets across the globe owing to sub-prime crisis, the soaring inflation rates, interestrates and rising crude oil prices has found its way into a case-study by Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai. “The finance club at JBIMS is planning to take up a case study on the Lehmann and Merril Lynch debacle in its ongoing series on ‘How lenient lending can turn into a bane rather than a boon’.

Most of the students are viewing the current downturn as a short term lull in the market and are expecting a recovery by the end of the year. This year, placements at JBIMS would range from niche profiles such as infrastructure advisory to conventional banking,” says Rahul Lachchhiramka, corporate relations committe at JBIMS.

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Finance loses favour with IIM-A students

AHMEDABAD: The US meltdown has not only triggered turmoil in the world economy, it's creating ripples at micro level too. For instance, students of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A ) are rattled by bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and buyout of Merrill Lynch.

Batch of 2009 has started chalking out alternative career plans. The dilemma they're facing is - what next, if not finance. Finance has topped the popularity chart among students as a sector for the last four years, with highest number of offers and heftiest salaries. This year, the sector is set to take a dip.

"The biggest anxiety is whether recruiters from that sector will come, and if they do, will they be able to make as many plum offers as in the past," says a student who was keen on finance, but is now looking at other sectors.

Even during summer placements, of the batch, 35.9 per cent students accepted offers from financial and investment banking firms, 22.4 per cent went for consulting, marketing, operations and general management attracted 20.5 per cent, private equity eight per cent, with rest going for other areas. In fact, during summer placements, Lehman Brothers had 15 IIM-A students and Merrill Lynch 13 interning with them.

"Not just the maximum number, but good students opt for finance. Now, they will have to face lot more competition in other sectors . This will give recruiters better bargaining power, where they can pick the best and offer less salaries," says another student who fears the US crisis will harm his prospects.

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B-schools fall short in teamwork, leadership

The ability to work in a team has often been voted as the most desired competency

There have been many surveys conducted among recruiters, including a few by our organization, to identify the competencies that they value most in a business school graduate.

The ability to work in a team, knowledge of subject and its effective application, analytical skills, leadership skills, creativity, performance focus, communication and presentation skills, customer orientation, ability to withstand work pressure, risk-taking ability, dealing with ambiguity and ability to prioritize are the key competencies expected of a B-school graduate.

Of these, the ability to work in a team has often been voted as the most desired competency. In my opinion, this is also the competency that B-schools, including the top ones, have failed to cultivate enough among their students.

In fact, the gap between what recruiters desire and what they get is the highest when it comes to team building, followed by leadership skills. This is one of the findings of an ambitious, four-year study conducted by Asha Bhandarkar, the Raman Munjal Chair professor of leadership studies at Management Development Institute (MDI) in Gurgaon.

She conducted psychometric tests among 1,000 students of nine top B-schools: The Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Lucknow, MDI, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamnalal Bajaj, S.P. Jain and Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. The first test was conducted just after their admission and the second test was done in the same group after about two years, just before they finished school. In addition, at least 300 alumni and about 100 recruiters were interviewed for the study.

The findings are published in her new book, Shaping Business Leaders: What B-schools Don’t Do. Says Bhandarkar: “Most of our B-schools do a bad job in enhancing the teamworking ability among their students. At the entry level, too, students score poorly against this competency.”

One reason for students being bad team players could be the increasingly competitive Indian environment that they are growing up in. Admission to a good institute from nursery school onward is more a process of rejection than selection. Entrance to top B-schools, where at least 300,000 compete for about 1,500 seats, forces students to be very competitive. There is a negative correlation between competition and collaboration. Success for an Indian student often means the other person has to fail, so pulling others down for one’s own ascent is then not considered abnormal.

Meanwhile, the evaluation process in most of our schools, which promote the rat race, further reinforces this mindset. The truth that each person in the team can individually achieve more by working together with other members, that everybody can be a winner is still not assimilated by the majority of students. Says Bhandarkar: “I tell my students what helped you get inside MDI will not help you in your future career. It takes a lot of effort to change the mindset of students who don’t listen to others and don’t believe that they can learn from others.”

For its part, MDI says it has designed various outbound activities to promote team spirit among students. The institute also shows students various management films. Students are first made aware of their mindset (knowing), which they accept and own (owning) and then the change process is initiated (changing).

Developing leadership skills is another area where B-schools do a bad job, suggests the Bhandarkar study. Ideally, a good leader should have a clear vision, make every person in the organization internalize it, motivate and enable everyone to work as a team towards the vision. For this, the leader has to overcome his or her insecurities. But a policy of divide and rule is still followed in many organizations.

In the Bhandarkar study, four aspects of leadership were explored: managing self, influencing others, managing complexity and managing diversity. These aspects are important for business leaders to operate in a global arena. The Bhandarkar study shows that B-school graduates fare poorly in influencing others.

To enhance leadership skills, Bhandarkar is of the view that students need to be provided opportunities to understand their emotive and inner psychic space. Exposure to theatre, outbound programmes, experiential labs and to some extent, gaming, will help them. They should also be given a liberal dose of literature and philosophy. She advocates that B-schools should identify classical works by social thinkers and philosophers, autobiographies and biographies of leaders such as M.K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Charles de Gaulle. They should also select classic films and use the interaction with great minds to broaden the perspective of students. This is important as most students come from technical, commerce as well as economics streams where they don’t get a chance to engage with the arts, philosophy, history, literature and political science.

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IIT, IIM placements face big hit

KOLKATA/CHENNAI: The Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch crisis has come as a big blow to leading academic institutions like Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Both the companies are among the biggest recruiters on campus in the financial domain and offer huge salaries and lucrative roles to students in analyst and associate positions. Not surprisingly, these elite institutions have been hard hit.

This year, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch have both offered PPOs (pre-placement offers) to IIM students, including foreign postings, which will, in all probability, be withdrawn.

Though the institutes have received no official intimation as well, Lehman will naturally be a no-show during final placements, although there is a faint hope among students that Bank of America may come after the Merrill buyout.

IIM Calcutta placement co-ordinator Rahul Ajmani told ET, “Not only are both these companies names to reckon with globally, they also offer extremely lucrative roles. This year, Lehman has offered 4 PPOs in London and New York while Merrill has offered PPOs in Singapore, London and India.”

During the final placements last time, Lehman had made four offers and Merrill around 5-6. “We're hopeful that Bank of America might come for final placements after things are sorted out," said Ajmani.

IIM Bangalore placement chairman S Mukherji feels much the same way. “The two companies had already offered a total of 6-7 PPOs this year. During final placements earlier, they had recruited about 12-13 students between them, many of them on foreign desks, including London, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong. We have not received any word from them yet and they are unlikely to intimate us so early. But this is bad news, indeed.”

IIT-Madras deputy registrartraining, placement and public relations office, Lt Col (retd) Jayakumar said, “Lehman Brothers has been recruiting for the past three years in the posts of associates and junior analysts. In their first year, they hired 16, in the second year 22 and 11 last year. The average salary offered is Rs 8.5 lakh per annum. The students placed haven't got back to us so far about the problem at Lehman. We are yet to see how the students react to recruitment from the investment banking space this year," he said.

IIM Ahmedabad PGP student placement committee co-ordinator Mihir Lal said, “We will be unable to give any figures as per our policy. Our official stand is that it is too early to tell right now what the fallout of all these developments will be.” IIM Lucknow placement chairperson S Kumar, however, preferred to down play things.

“Lehman Brothers made 3 offers last year. Yes, it's a loss since they are among the top names, but in terms of numbers, the impact will not be that great,” added Mr Kumar.

Prof Ganapathy, head-placement and external relations, Institute for Financial and Management Research, said: “Lehman is visiting our campus for the first time this month for recruitment. What happens at the global level might not be replicated in India.”

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Editorial: Reality check on B-schools

It’s easy to get carried away by the spike in the placement pay-cheques of the top B-school students who graduated in 2008. For, the average 20 per cent rise in salaries flies in the face of slowdown fears. The rosy numbers, published in this year’s All India Management Association’s Best B-school Survey, in association with this newspaper, show once again that industry’s demand for high-quality managers continues to exceed supply. What makes the jump in salaries even more impressive is that it does not take into account the offers from international companies.

The results will surely lift the spirits of all B-school aspirants, but the survey does well to go beyond the hype and drive home the point that the real impact of the slowdown could be seen only during the next placement season — a point summed up well by IIM Ahmedabad Director Sameer Barua when he says that even in March, recruiters had not come to appreciate the far-reaching impact of the sub-prime crisis in the US. Six months later, the flame of optimism is flickering, but it’s heartening that most of the top B-schools are innovating fast to cushion the blow of a slowing economy when the placement season starts in November-December this year. That explains the initiatives to look beyond traditional recruiters like the financial services heavyweights and courting start-ups and foreign firms outside the US.

Prospects of salary increases are only one part of the overall story and the AIMA survey has several other key takeaway points. It’s different from similar other exercises as it does not rank institutes and only classifies them into different groups according to their performance on parameters ranging from intellectual capital to industry interface. That’s important as the survey serves as a checklist for students, institutes and recruiters and less as a contest in which even a minor data aberration can change the rank of an institute and give a distorted picture. For example, the checklist tells us that a few schools like FMS Delhi and IMT Ghaziabad are catching up fast with the IIMs on critical areas like research, campus infrastructure and innovative learning. And surprisingly, many more teachers at the lesser-known institutes (classified as Group C+ in the survey) have more industry experience than those at the higher end of the ladder. Also, the slowdown has made an impact on industry interaction as the number of consultancy projects and management development programmes has dipped, as much as by half in some high-order groups.

These are interesting findings, but the fact is such surveys have obvious limitations because their coverage is limited only to the mainstream B-schools that have managed to carve out successful niches for themselves. At a time when management courses are mushrooming, such limited surveys can often fail to give a holistic view. For example, it’s a fact that the general quality of education, reflected in the knowledge base and skill set of the management graduates churned out by a majority of the institutes, is plummeting. That’s because the permission to set up B-schools has been granted indiscriminately, resulting in a diminishing control over quality. Thus, recruiters’ choices are widening only in numerical terms. Only about a fifth of the 1,120 B-schools approved by the All India Council of Technical Education make it to the serious recruiter’s list.

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B-schools get social about entrepreneurship

Initiatives help blend skills of the corporate world with the social agenda of NGOs.

Social entrepreneurship is increasingly finding its way into B-school campuses to facilitate future managers to choose the right business strategies, keeping in mind their impact on society and the environment.

With the focus on the aspect of social responsibility for business leaders of tomorrow, management institutes across the country are coming up with various initiatives to promote social entrepreneurship.

According to the business schools, the initiatives help blend the entrepreneurial skills of the corporate world with the social purpose of non-governmental organisations.

And the initiatives from the business schools are also luring an increasing crop of professionals preferring to take the path of becoming social entrepreneurs by shunning cushy jobs.

The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) recently played host to EXIMIUS, its first entrepreneurship summit in August. Capping the summit was a panel discussion on ‘Social Entrepreneurship’, featuring eminent speakers who have dedicated their lives to this cause.

At Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, the interesting concept will soon make its debut into Xpressions ’08, the annual inter-bschool meet at XIMB through ‘Spardha’, the social entrepreneurship game.

“We are planning to introduce ‘Spardha’ with the objective of developing the education and infrastructure of villages through micro-planning. The participating teams will submit the plans for a particular village and the plan of the winning team may be implemented on a larger level. The game will be introduced during the annual festival held in November at XIMB,” says a core committe member of XIMB.

Similarly, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) company Syntel is promoting an organisation called Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) within the campus of K J Somaiya Insitute of Management Studies and Research (SIMSR) that holds competitions and workshops on social entrepreneurship across B-schools to promote awareness about the subject.

“We also invite venture capitalists and private equity firms at these events to advise budding entrepreneurs on taking up social entrepreneurship. Moreover, our students also develop self help groups (SHG) in slum areas in Mumbai to market low-cost water filters and making slum dwellers financially responsible as a build up to their future ventures,” said Suresh Ghai, director of the institute.

In order to nurture potential social entrepreneurs, business schools are walking an extra mile to make room for the subject.

For instance, the Social Entrepreneurship Fair held at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) aims to encourage entrepreneurs, who would act as agents of change in society and is a meeting point for active social entrepreneurs, emerging social entrepreneurs and venture funds.

But while making a social impact is a top agenda for most of the budding entrepreneurs, they also want to earn money like any other entreprise.

“Save The Environment, which is being incubated by us, is working on providing clean drinking water in eastern parts of the country like West Bengal and Orissa where the arsenic content in underground water is alarmingly high. Unlike a non-government organisation (NGO), the enterprise offers water to the locals at nominal prices,” says Kunal Upadhyay, chief executive officer at IIM-A’s Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).

Upadhyay notes that many more management institutes seem to be encouraging students to take up social entrepreneurship. “Even at IIM-A, every year several students are interested in taking up social entrepreneurship in sectors like health and water,” he adds.

The Entrepreneurship Development Cell, initiated by the students of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, also aims to develop the spirit of entrepreneurship among students as a quality and as a career.

It also plans to develop a strong network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, senior professionals and individuals directly or indirectly associated with entrepreneurship and to develop a resource centre of information about entrepreneurship and its various aspects.

The cell has organised various events ranged over social entrepreneurship events on campus to generate IIT business plan contests.

Likewise, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)’s Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC), had recently come up with the concept of ‘ThinkYuva’ to identify and eradicate social issues like filth, poverty, malnutrition and bribery.

Not to be left behind in the race to promote entrepreneurial talent in an upcoming sector, some management institutes have shaped their curriculum in a way to accomodate the concept of social entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) is planning to launch a two-month training programme called Social Entrepreneurship Development Programme at its Gujarat campus in January.

“Social entrepreneurship should not be linked to social work. A social entrepreneur must identify business ideas, should not depend on grant permanently and make profit to give it back to the society. The non-government organisations (NGOs) pay well today and even corporates offer huge amount under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). So the students with an urge to do something for the society get attracted to social entrepreneurship and the academic institutes today have realised this need to groom such students,” says Ajay Dixit, who teaches social entrepreneurship at EDI.

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), on the other hand, has designed a uniquely architectured One Year Diploma Programme in Social Entrepreneurship and a Three Year Part Time MBA Programme in Social Entrepreneurship.

The institute has also established a Social Enterprise Cell on campus to address issues of sustainable development, micro enterprise development and management, marketing of rural products, management of NGOs, micro insurance and micro finance through workshops, lectures, seminars, conferences, training programmes, management development programmes and symposia.

Indian School of Business (ISB) is all set to oganise a three-day international business conference on ‘Igniting the Genius Within’ in October, which offers the participants an opportunity to tap into the contemporary approaches for developing global leadership, sparking innovation and nurturing change in their respective organisations.

Besides, ISB’s Centre for Entrepreneurship Development has created a forum for Technology Innovations at the Centre that focuses on discovering innovative solutions for domestic markets.

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IIM-C gets 54 pre-placement offers; scene is bright

Placements for the batch of 2009 at IIM Calcutta (IIM-C) have begun on a positive note with the number of pre-placement offers (PPOs) already touching 54. Last year, IIM-C received a total of 90 PPOs. The PPO season is expected to go on till the end of this year.
The premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) expect a 25 to 50 per cent increase in pre-placement offers (PPOs) this academic year.

Around 20 companies have made offers till date. Over 85 companies participated in the summer placement process at IIM Calcutta in November last year and offered both Indian and international profiles across different sectors. This year, more than half the companies are still to announce the results of the summer internship.

Overall, the placement scene looks bright with the total number of pre-placement offers expected to increase as more firms announce the results of the summer internship process. The students have bagged jobs across sectors like consulting firms, investment banks,
commercial banking, general management and marketing firms.

Notwithstanding the prevailing negative sentiment especially in the international banking sector, IIM-C has managed to buck the trend across the board in the summer internships. Students have been offered international profiles with BCG, Mckinsey, Bain and AT Kearney in the consulting sector and Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers,
Barclays, HSBC, Credit Suisse and Citibank in the investment banking sector deciding to give out final job offers midway through the academic year itself.

Macquarie, which is a first timer on campus, has already made offers to all the India interns. The offers have been made across continents in Australia, Europe, US, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines and India. With marketing and general management firms also offering international profiles on campus, the good news only
gets better with HUL, P&G, Aditya Birla Group and TAS making pre-placement offers to students.

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Placements at SPJIMR in full swing

The placement process spread over two days ended with projects being offered across various sectors like IT, investments, FMCG, etc.

Mumbai: Internship placements for corporate projects at Mumbai based SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) concluded successfully as the institute placed its largest batch yet in the face of a not-so-favourable economic situation.

The entire batch of 164 was placed on the first day of placements. Signing off with exciting, never-offered-before profiles, the PGDM class of 2009 accentuated the trend that has been seen at the institute.

The placement process spread over two days, ended with participants being offered projects in companies across sectors like consultancy, banking, IT, investment banking, FMCG, private equity, manufacturing, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, telecom and media.

Companies participating in the process included HT Media, Tata Administrative Services (TAS), Microsoft, Nestle, Intel, Motorola, IBM to name a few.

A number of participants from various international firms like Landor Associates, e-Bay, Cisco, etc. also came to SPJIMR. PGDM participants at the Institute carry out social projects.

Corporate India has to come out with specially designed projects under the ‘Autumn’s Internship’ in the months of September and October every year.

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