Thursday, July 31, 2008

Interview with Ms. Rekha Sethi, Director General, AIMA

Q 1. Over 22 years of Experience in CII what make you to join apex body AIMA

22 years of grooming in CII made me ready to take up the challenge of the top executive job at AIMA. Lot of synergy between the kind of work done at CII and AIMA and so it is like a natural progression.

Q 2. What's your next step, after becoming the Director General of AIMA?

AIMA is a great Institution and a great Brand!
My key KRAs at AIMA, while all the while working towards AIMA’s vision to be a leader in management development movement and facilitate individuals and organizations realize their potential include International ties and linkages, enhance AIMA’s profile, E Learning and E Testing and more mega events from the AIMA portfolio.

Q 3. Any plans to improve the standard of MAT ?

The purpose of an aptitude test is to assess the potential of the candidates. In the case of Management Aptitude Test (MAT) it has been designed and structured to assess the potential of the candidates to undergo management programs.
We are working towards taking MAT online.

Q 4. What is the strategy behind conducting 20 to 25 events every year?

Events are one of the vehicles through which AIMA reaches out to its membership. They also profile AIMA. The differentiating factor is that AIMA events and programmes are based on industry needs. The mix of programmes is such that it caters to all managerial levels including b-school faculty and students.
The vision is to organize mega events – with a much higher profile while maintaining the content and depth of each event.

Q.5 Comment on “Business Responsibility Summit”

This Summit was path breaking, as it marked the beginning of a new movement of Responsible Business- a clear departure from CSR on the side. We set out to propose a definite agenda on Responsible Business for the professional community to follow and the response we got was satisfactory. We plan to take this further to ensure that the movement grows and businesses voluntarily assume responsible ways.

Q.6 What are the new courses in AIMA?

(a) In association with IGNOU, we are planning to introduce a few sectoral specialization courses in the areas of Energy, Transport and Education sectors. Some of these courses would be made available through e-learning mode.

(b) We are also planning to launch one year Post Graduate Diploma programme in Financial Planning to meet the growing demand for financial planners due to the exponential growth in the Financial Services sector.

Q 7. What do you think about the management talent in India?

Every year almost 1.5 to 2 lakh Management Graduates are passing out of over 1500 B-Schools in the country. A large percentage of the graduates passing out from the average (not well known B-Schools) lack analytical and soft skills. There are enough jobs but companies are complaining that they are not able to recruit people with right skills.

Q 8. Kindly comment on AMT session held on July 21st?

To contribute towards quality management education, AIMA offers certification service popularly known as Accredited Management Teacher (AMT). The certification recognizes the academic achievements and professional expertise of management professionals and management teachers. It aims at identifying capable professionals from any arena not necessarily academics who can effectively impart management education by virtue of their academic achievements and professional experience.

The idea of AMT certification is to create a pool of experienced and knowledgeable management faculty from academia and industry. AMTs become benchmark of quality management faculty for B-Schools. Accreditation sessions (presentation and interviews) are conducted once in a month i.e. normally on third Monday of each month at AIMA, New Delhi. The forthcoming AMT sessions are planned for 18 August and 15 September at Delhi. To facilitate the applicants from Kerala an AMT session is planned at Cochin on 29 September this year.

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B-school placements may take 25-30% hit this year

The economic downturn is expected to take its toll on B-school placements too. The premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) do not appear to be perturbed, but other prominent B-schools anticipate a 25-30 per cent drop in placements this academic year.

They are concerned that several regular companies may drop out of the placements and others may recruit fewer numbers than usual.

For instance, Mumbai-based SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) discovered that although 60 per cent of the companies have committed to recruiting the regular numbers, 30 per cent said they are not sure if they would recruit in regular numbers and 8 per cent said they would freeze recruitment for the time being.

Placement officials of B-schools who spoke to this paper still hope the situation won’t be as bad but admit that the students might have to compromise on their dream profiles this year.

As a precautionary measure, the management institutes have already started expanding their company base by approaching new firms, such as smaller private equity players and wealth management firms. Unlike most years, the Banking and Financial Services (BFSI) sector is not expected to be the best performer on the campuses this year. FMCG, trading and the services sector might take the lead instead.

“The number of offers on B-school campuses by the financial sector could come down with some companies even opting out of placements this year,” said Professor Subir Verma, chairperson, placements, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon.

Some companies, however, see a silver lining in the current slowdown as they stand a chance to recruit students even at a salary they would have to offer.

According to a placement officer of a reputed Mumbai-based B-school, these companies, including banks, found it difficult to recruit from campus earlier because of relatively low salary levels, despite good job profiles.

“It helps us in the sales and marketing scenario. It’s a win-win situation for the company as well as the students because they will find growth and we will get the best of talent from second rung B-schools. Given the ambition and expectations, one cannot afford an IIM or an FMS student,” says T N Radhakrishna, HR Head, UTI MF. The company, however, would be careful in terms of articulating its recruitment needs, said Radhakrishna.

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

MBA students in biz venture

In business, it’s the early bird that rakes in the moolah. Taking cue from the age-old proverb, two MBA students have turned entrepreneurs even before graduating.

H.R. Sampreet and Saurav Dhiman, second-year students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have launched their own company, Enfount Business Solutions. Their maiden venture is Bulkdeals.co.in, a Bangalore
based online retail window specialising in institutional and organisational buying of laptops, desktops and other electronic items.

“Across campuses, students form groups to buy computers so retailers give them a discount,” said Sampreet. “But this happens locally and in an unorganised manner,” he explained.
The duo saw a business opportunity in this campus trend and created an online platform that is a one-stop-shop for bulk deals of laptops and desktops of all brands.

“Here, students can register and get great deals directly from the brands,” Sampreet said. “We estimate this to be a Rs 200-400 crore market. The brands, too, were looking for a single window to reach out to the student community. We had the business model and wanted to hit the market early, so we started even before graduating,” he added.

The company is partnering with almost all top brands such as Dell, LG, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and HCL.

The website had over 1,000 visitors in the first three days of its launch and already has more than 300 members and over 20 registered colleges, including all the IITs.

When asked how they plan to balance studies with running a business, Saurav said: “It is all about time management. Our business requires just two or three hours a day, which we can easily put in.”

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Business schools make merry in economic slowdown

The Indian economy has run into rough weather. B-schools, however, are not feeling the pinch, since companies are increasingly sending mid- and senior-level executives to management schools for skill enhancement programmes in a bid to increase productivity and motivate employees.

B-schools have seen an increase of 25-30 per cent in their revenues as more students take up the Management Development Programmes (MDPs) this year.

JK Organisation’s eastern division plans to send around 275 mid-level executives for training to IIM-Bangalore for these short-term MDPs. It plans to spend around Rs 4 crore on corporate training over the next two years. National Thermal Power Corporation will be sending 350 executives to B-schools against 250 last year.

GK Agarwal, executive director, human resources and Power Management Institute, National Thermal Power Corporation, says: “Training and development during a slowdown becomes even more important as an organisation needs to multiply its efforts and produce better results.”

The programmes include courses like ‘Case-Based Turnaround Management’, ‘Personality Development’, ‘Resilience Programmes’, ‘Entrepreneurial Development’, ‘Managing People’ and ‘How To Avoid Another Slowdown’.

Deepak Chandra, associate dean, Centre for Executive Education, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, says: “When the markets are down, there is a need to acquire skills. This helps companies in their talent management strategy.”

Among IT firms, the bottom line is affected the most while the mid-management gets a hit in the realty, manufacturing, automobile, investment banking, insurance and brokerage businesses.

Prakash Bhide, president, corporate human resources, JK Organisation (eastern zone), says: “Sending executives for training helps in keeping them motivated. Productivity levels are also maintained. It’s a good investment even when the market is bad.”

Ganesh Shermon, partner and head, people and change solutions (Human Capital Advisory Services), KPMG, says: “Re-skilling will definitely go up during the current economic trend. Organisations will use B-schools to polish skills of their employees.”

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Sunday, July 27, 2008

Raining jobs for techies

Ranchi, July 24: Plum jobs await students who will graduate from BIT, Mesra, in 2009.

Within a fortnight or so, about 500 students pursuing BTech, MTech, MCA and other courses, have already been placed during the first phase of the recruitment drive this year.

The rush for BIT students among Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Tata Motors, Maruti Udyog Limited, Tata Consultancy Service, Wipro and Satyam among others has led authorities to believe that by August 15 — the last date for the first phase of placements — all students would have one or more offers.

“TCS recruited 264 students while Microsoft’s offer is the highest — Rs 9 lakh per annum. A boom in civil engineering and manufacturing sector is evident,” said B.B. Pant, the head of training and placement department, BIT, Mesra.

Pant said at this juncture he could not reveal whether the average annual salary this year would surpass that of last year. But the overall response shown by the companies was impressive, he said.

The campus recruitment drive started from July 4 and authorities are hoping that all 800 students, would be placed suitably before August 15.

Students from all BIT centres — Patna, Jaipur, Calcutta, Allahabad, Noida, Muscat and Bahrain — are taking part in the recruitment process.

Today, officials of three companies — LG Electronics, Tata Consulting Engineers, John Deere — visited the campus.

John Deere, a name to reckon with in tractor manufacturing, would continue their drive tomorrow.

At least 200 students were yet to be offered suitable placements. By the next week or so BIT, Mesra, hopes to ensure 100 per cent placements.

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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Accreditation Of Teachers: Shortage of Faculty

Management education is must have education for many students. The field opens various streams for a bright career. However, good education is only possible with qualitative faculty. Here we talk about accreditation of management teachers.

Non availability of adequate faculty is a major constraint for sustainable growth of quality management education in India. Today there are over 1700 management schools. All of these are in need of faculty. In view of the severity of faculty shortage, B-Schools have not been able to improve the standards – both in faculty, student ratio and senior - junior faculty ratios. Given the demand supply gap, additional faculty needs to be attracted.

In addition to pursuing traditional routes, new support facilities have to be created to overcome faculty shortage. This has also been brought out by NKC Working Group on Management Education in their report submitted to Prime Minister in October 2007.

To meet the demand of management faculty AIMA as a national apex body for professional management in the country has a scheme for Accreditation of Management Teachers (AMT). It aims at identifying capable professionals from any arena not necessarily academics who can effectively impart management education by virtue of their academic achievements and professional experience. It has been well acknowledged that teachers at management institutions should be those who have practiced and practitioners who can teach.

The applicants for AMT certification are screened through the following process: It starts with Screening of Applicants and goes through Psychometric Profiling, Presentation,and lastly an Interview.

Accreditation sessions are conducted at AIMA, New Delhi every third Monday of each month. To facilitate the applicants from western part of the country an accreditation session was held at Pune on 28 June 2008. Another accreditation session for applicants from Kerala is planned in the month of September this year.

Qualification required for this program: Post Graduate Degree or equivalent in a discipline relevant to management education.Post Graduate level regular teaching experience of minimum 3 years. Or Industry / consultancy / training / research experience of minimum 5 years.

The Accreditation Board comprising of highly reputed academician from institutes of excellence, senior practicing HR heads and consultants with proven track record conduct interviews with candidates. The AIMA’s initiative of AMT certification is to create a pool of experienced and knowledgeable management faculty from academia and industry. AMTs can be considered as benchmark of quality management faculty for B-Schools.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

IIFT Entrance Exam on 23rd November 2008

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi has announced dates for its entrance exam for MBA at Delhi and Kolkata campuses.The exam will be held on 23rd November, 2008. GMAT scores declared after January 1, 2007 also acceptable.

IIFT entrance exam will be conducted in 20 cities: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam.

The IIFT exam is based on multiple choice objective questions. The paper will be 2 hours with different sections including English Comprehension, General Knowledge & Awareness, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Analysis.

The students will be selected on the basis of their performance in Written Test, Group Discussion, Interview and Essay Writing.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Professionals across streams enroll for MBA

B-schools are also encouraging professionals from diverse profiles to do an MBA.

Bhuvana Ramalingam, senior director of communication, ISB, says: “Anyone can do an MBA. Earlier, engineers made up a chunk of MBAs. Today, it’s people from backgrounds as diverse as journalism and defence. Diversity is important in business education as it enhances discussions in the classroom.”

KJ Somaiya Institute of Management, Mumbai, has changed the selection criteria to incorporate as many disciplines as possible. Unlike last year, when 95 per cent of students came from engineering backgrounds, this year only 60 per cent of students are engineers.

A consideration of 12.5 per cent on past academic records is now applicable to students from all the disciplines under the revised selection criteria, as against last year when only engineering students received this consideration.

The institute has also cut down the consideration on work experience from 7.5 per cent to 5 per cent, and has broadening the eligibility to include aspirants from other disciplines as well.

Satish Deodhar, chairperson, admissions at IIM, Ahmedabad, said: “Another trend in IIM-A is that of Chartered Accountants (CAs) doing MBA. Earlier there were many economic students opting for MBA. But today, they have been outnumbered by engineers and CAs as there is more scope for economic graduates in the field of BPO or hospitality.”

The Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar, (XIMB), has more than 60 per cent of engineers this year.

Many feel that an MBA is a favoured programme for all as offers a complete learning experience. But why switch career for an MBA degree, especially when you are in a good profession, already?

The answer seems to be the competitive advantage the programme confers.

“Management education gives students a jump start. The salaries are attractive after an MBA, for instance the average salary for an MBA from IIM is 10 lakh. There could be other reasons for opting for an MBA like tedious jobs, the urge to break the glass ceiling and to broaden the niche market for one’s own profession,” explains Deodhar.

A section of MBA aspirants feels that the course helps them bridge the gap in their established domain of education.

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IIPM ranked No 1 B-School in India

Extenuating its spirited campaign ‘Dare To Think Beyond the IIMs’, the Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM) surpassed the performance of all the IIMs to be rated as the No 1 business school in India for the extensive ‘Global Exposure’ it provides to its students, followed by IIM (A) and IIM (B) at rank 2 and rank 3 respectively. The ranking was conducted by ‘Zee Business Best B School Survey’, a first of its kind on Indian television in association with leading international research firm Synovate. IIPM also achieved Rank 7 (ahead of 2 IIMs) as the Best B School overall, Rank 8 for Best Industry Interface, Rank 9 for Best Placements (ahead of 1 of the IIMs) and Rank 9 for Best Course Content.

IIPM’s rank as the No 1 in the B School with best global exposure category only justifies its unique and biggest such initiative it undertakes for its students not just in India but anywhere in the world! As part of its Global Outreach Program (GOP), professors from top Ivy League universities like Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Stanford, London School of Economics, Oxford etc visit IIPM to conduct joint workshops with IIPM faculty for Indian corporate fraternity and teach IIPM students. World renowned gurus like Philip Kotler, Zig Zigler, Stephen Covey have also taken exclusive sessions with IIPM students in India.

Under the aegis of IIPM’s Global Opportunities & Threat Analysis (GOTA) program, all of IIPM’s more than 3000 students visit Europe or America or other developed nations for 2-3 weeks to get first hand international exposure of how the best in the world work. They visited hundreds of world organizations like The World Bank, ILO, United Nations, WTO, big corporations like Nestle, Honda, IBM, BMW, FIAT, Citigroup, and universities like IMD and many more in the recent past.

Students from top international universities also visit IIPM to undertake a specialization semester. This is the Global Students Exchange Program (GSEP). In 2007-08 twelve international institutions from France, Italy, Russia, Denmark, Austria and Germany sent their students to study a module/ trimester at IIPM.

IIPM’s international placements this year have been only second to IIMs. While IIMs placed 249 of its students abroad this year, IIPM placed 165 followed by ISB with 111. The next best international placement figure by any other b did not touch even 35!

While IIPM believes that it is by far the best B School in the country that is constantly setting new benchmarks in management education, the time is not far when IIPM will surpass all the IIMs in all the rankings.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Hospital management need of the hour

Mumbai, July 20 With the hospital industry expected to grow at the rate of 30 per cent by industry analysis, need for hospital management professionals is growing by the day. The Institute of Clinical Research India has started a health section which is offering MBA in hospital management and medical tourism. The founding member of the Academy of Hospital Administration, Dr Munindra Srivastava has taken charge of the ICRI Health division. Excerpts from an interview:

Q. What was the need of designing a specific course for hospital management and medical tourism?
Trained manpower will be required soon. These people will be trained in maintenance, human resource management, quality and quantity of care along with promotion and strategizing. The earlier conception that management is “common sense” and can be handled by senior medical professionals is no longer true. It has become a highly specified field.

Q. What value addition will a trained professional make to hospital management?
The course will teach them how an operation theatre is designed, about waste disposal, laws related to hospitals and human resource. We will also train them how to prepare for accreditations and how to maintain standards. Hospital management professionals need to have a degree in science before they are trained in management. This will probably avoid arguments arising among administrators.

Q. Though a lot of hospitals, government and private, are trying for accreditation, there is a debate that the norms should be reconsidered for these two branches.
The accreditation norms were designed by a body of experts from the fields of medicine, law and management. We collected all existing norms and formulated new ones after considering the laws and conditions at the hospital.

Q. There is a lot of dispute related to MCI recognition and the universities. Why is this happening and what can be done?
There is only one reason for this. The state government gives the permission for land and setup while the MCI comes in later. All approvals should come at the same time. The students get cheated sometimes at the time of admissions as they are told that the applications have been sent for MCI recognition.

Q. Where is the hospital industry heading and what are its demands?
The industry is expected to grow at the rate of 30 per cent in the next few years. Also the corporate sector is likely to enter the healthcare field as more and more foreign patients are coming to India for treatment. Patients are demanding professionally managed hospitals, which need specially trained professionals. Stagnation too appears to be a far fetched dream as of now.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Educational institutes under fire for unauthorised foreign tie-ups

NEW DELHI: Technical education institutes and B-schools competing with each other to find partners abroad have run into trouble with the authorities terming many such ties-ups as illegal.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulator of technical educational institutions in India, has since late June served notices to over 104 institutes for partnering foreign universities without AICTE’s approval.

The AICTE has also served notices to 169 other institutes, including some of the big names in the private education sector, for conducting unauthorised technical courses.

Perturbed over the spate of advertisements by private educational institutes during the admission session, the government in April asked AICTE to take action against those making false claims, especially about their foreign alliances and deemed university status.

The state governments, too, were asked to take action against institutes that have unauthorised alliances and ran courses without proper approval.

“Very few such institutes have sorted out the issue with us,” said one AICTE official. Most of these institutions are in Delhi, Maharashtra and the southern states.

“We have asked states to close down institutions and take legal action against those who have violated the norms,” the official said.

Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh in April expressed his strong reservations about the foreign tie-ups of many private educational institutes.

The government later asked the AICTE to make its regulations for foreign institutes’ entry stricter.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) was also asked to adopt stricter norms for granting deemed university status.

Since then, the AICTE has been collecting information in newspaper announcements, websites, complaints received from students, the public and other sources on institutes conducting technical courses.

According to AICTE’s 2005 regulations for foreign universities entry into India, it can monitor the operations of foreign institutes that provide technical education in India.

The regulations also apply to Indian universities and institutes.

“Any other educational activity carried out in India, in any manner, by a foreign university or institution is also regulated by the AICTE,” the official said.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Challenging Work and Corporate Responsibility Lures MBA Grads

STANFORD, Calif., Jul 18, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — A survey of 759 graduating MBAs at 11 top business schools reveals that the future business leaders rank corporate social responsibility high on their list of values, and they are willing to sacrifice a significant part of their salaries to find an employer whose thinking is in synch with their own.

As reported in this month’s Stanford Knowledgebase, new research by Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member David Montgomery, and Catherine Ramus of UC Santa Barbara, examines the tradeoffs students are willing to make when selecting a potential employer. They found that intellectual challenge ranked number one in desirable job attributes, while money and location were essentially tied for second, each roughly 80 percent as important as the most important factor. “Had money not been ranked high, I would have thought I’d made a mistake,” says Montgomery, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing Strategy, Emeritus.

A reputation for ethical conduct and caring policies towards employees ranked high as well–75 percent as high as intellectual challenge and 95 percent as important as the financial package. “I was frankly surprised that ethics and caring about people came up so important as they did,” says Montgomery. “This augurs well for the character of the 21st century MBA.”

Other attributes of corporate social responsibility, including environmental sustainability and care for the community and other stakeholders, was weighted with over half the importance of the top job criterion, intellectual challenge.

Montgomery first looked at MBA job preferences some 30 years ago, but his initial interest was really methodological, he says. He wanted to demonstrate that conjoint analysis could predict behavior with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It does.

Montgomery and the late Dick Wittink, the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing at the Yale School of Management and editor of Journal of Marketing Research, conducted interviews with MBA students early in the winter quarter of 1978, and used the results to make predictions about the types of jobs the graduates would accept. When the researchers compared the jobs the grads actually accepted the following spring, they found that the results of the conjoint analysis made a correct prediction 68 percent of the time. Chance alone was below 30 percent.

Because conjoint analysis has been shown to successfully predict MBA job preferences and choice, it answers one obvious objection to Montgomery’s work: “Aren’t the answers influenced by the subject’s desire to appear (both to the interviewer and to him/herself) socially conscious or at least, not greedy?” What’s more, the recent interviews were not conducted in person, but anonymously online, so there is also less chance of bias contaminating the answers.

Montgomery developed his own software to administer conjoint testing in the 1970s. A more sophisticated, commercial product called Sawtooth Software was used in the recent studies. The software poses questions to the subject; follow-up questions vary according to the content of the previous answer.

Montgomery, the former dean of the School of Business at Singapore Management University, travels widely and uses those opportunities to gather data. During appearances at business conferences in such venues as Seoul, Singapore, and Dubai he asked the largely American audiences how much of their salary they thought graduating MBA students would forego to work with an employer who shared their values of corporate responsibility. The majority (55.8 percent) thought the grads would sacrifice between zero and $3,000 a year, while just 5.4 percent put the number at $9,000 a year or more.

Seem accurate? It wasn’t. The attendees greatly underestimated the dollar amounts the grads would be willing to give up, a finding that shows the results of the broader study are far from intuitive.

Montgomery and Ramus broke down corporate responsibility into four categories: caring about employees, caring for stakeholders (such as community residents), environmental sustainability, and ethical business conduct. A fifth category was a model that shared all of the above characteristics.

The researchers found that the students expected to earn an average of $103,650 a year at their first job. Nearly all (97.3 percent) said they would be willing to make a financial sacrifice to work for a company that exhibited all four characteristics of social responsibility. They said they would sacrifice an average of $14,902 a year, or 14.4 percent of their expected salary.

Montgomery concedes that the students may have inflated the dollar amounts they would be willing to sacrifice, but because those numbers are very consistent with other data within the study, he said he believes the overstatements are not large.

Montgomery says he finds the results hopeful. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if the financial package had turned out to be most important,” he says.

As for the future, he and his colleague are broadening their sample and looking to see how gender and nationality figure into MBA job choices. His preliminary take: “It’s not a ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’ sort of thing,” though women do seem more concerned with social factors than men are, he says. Regional variations exist as well, with Europeans less likely to be concerned with attributes of corporate social responsibility than their counterparts in North America.

It appears, then, that recruiters may need to fine-tune their pitches to take into account the rising social consciousness of business students.

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Zee Business conducts first B-School survey on TV

Zee Business, the Hindi business news channel from the house of Zee News Ltd, is conducting a Business School survey, in association with international research firm Synovate.

The survey, claimed to be the first such B-School survey in India by a TV channel, would be a ready reckoner for both aspiring B-School students and recruiters. The survey results will be out by the end of this month.

Talking on the occasion, Barun Das, CEO, Zee News Ltd, said “This is our first initiative to connect with B-schools and the future business professionals.”

The Zee Business B-School survey is currently on and is being currently carried out across the top Indian Cities & towns. A special microsite, www.zeebiz.com/bschool, has also been created for general public to give their opinion on who they feel should be India’s Best B-School.

As top Indian B-schools churn out young managers for a global market- place, the leading management institutes are looking for ways to become more global. The idea is to create managers who are ready for an increasingly flat world.

“The key aspect that will set our survey apart from the many B-school surveys in the country will be our focus on the Global Linkages - be it Global Placements, International Internships or Global Faculty”, says Raktim Das, business head, Zee Business.

“Our methodology is a very robust one. We are polling all the stakeholders of a B-school, comprising MBA wannabes, recruiters, young executives, current MBAs, and management school faculty.” says Samir Ahluwalia, editor, Zee Business.

“We are not trying to quantify parameters that are debatable such as the number of academic papers written by the B-school’s faculty or how many books it has in its library or how big is the campus.” Ahluwalia adds.

The survey is being carried out across the top 10 cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Patna, Guwahati, Lucknow, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

B-schools target women entrepreneurs

Programme coordinators think women lack the means to bring their potential to fruition; exclusively designed courses, workshops, lectures and seminars attempt to bridge the gap.

B-schools in the country have initiated programmes intended to churn out women entrepreneurs.

Indian Institute of Bangalore (IIM-B), Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai, are among the institutes offering programmes exclusively for women entrepreneurs.

The Centre for Executive Education, ISB, in partnership with the Goldman Sachs Group is launching a global corporate engagement initiative. Under this, ISB will conceptualise and conduct short-term programmes for financially weak women without a formal business education.

Kavil Ramachandran, professor and associate dean, academic programmes at the ISB, said: “There are women who have the potential to grow, but lack the means. The initiative has been launched to create managerial capabilities, support and empower women entrepreneurs. Women are usually better managers as they understand reality, respond well to challenges and the general tendency of women entrepreneurs is to employ more women.”

IIM-B runs a Management Programme for Women Entrepreneurs. The six-week programme, including two weeks of business plan presentation, is conducted at IIM-B every summer with visiting and guest faculty providing training to existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs.

Ganesh Prabhu, professor of corporate strategy and policy, IIM-B, said: “The programme was started as a follow-up to another programme called Management Programme for Trainers of Women Entrepreneurs, in association with the Oxford University in 2002-03. In 2004, we thought of running an independent programme for women entrepreneurs. The participants in the programme are provided with an option to work at our incubation centre. The programme fee is Rs 17,000 for non-residential students and Rs 25,000 for residential students.”

NMIMS has started a three-month special management programme called ‘Enterprise Training for Women’. The academic programme looks into the practicalities of starting a new business venture.

Many institutes prefer to arrange for lectures, seminars and workshops. Like the International conference on ‘Harnessing the Entrepreneurial Potential of Women for Economic Growth’, to be organised by Manipal Institute of Management jointly with Asian Centre for Entrepreneurial Initiatives (ASCENT) as Knowledge partner in January 2009. The conference aims to discuss and deliberate on various issues related to women entrepreneurship development.

The Centre for Development of Women at Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) regularly invites eminent women personalities like Rama Bijapurkar of Infosys and Ranjana Kumar, Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission, to set an example for aspiring women entrepreneurs.

Janak Parikh, president, AMA, said: “We invite a lot of successful women to encourage women entrepreneurs and tell them how they manage important positions along with their family responsibilities. Things do not end at graduation or marriage for women today, as they want to seek further education, better career opportunities and want to make a mark. Entrepreneurship and business is no longer a man’s domain.”

Ahmedabad-based International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (ICECD), a pioneer in designing and implementing Entrepreneurship training programmes for women, has introduced a Post Graduate Diploma in Enterprise Management And Entrepreneurship recognised by the University of Gujarat.

Hina Shah, director, ICECD, said: “The course integrates business management with entrepreneurship. This helps in successful management of small and medium scale enterprises and family-owned businesses. It also infuses managers in the corporate sector the entrepreneurial spirit.”

So, what is it about women entrepreneurship, especially at the grassroots, that is attracting so much attention from academic institutes?

Prabhu from IIM-B said: “Women prefer to learn and patiently build their business step by step instead of facing a lot of failures. Also, women tend to come with a variety of innovative businesses. Self-employed women in the rural sector have a major impact on society. Training and educating a woman will make her independent, ensuring that her children will be educated and healthy. As an institute , we are able to reach out to people. So, the whole idea of empowering women by educational institutes is to create an overall positive impact on the society.”

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Understanding social media and Web 2.0

WHILE MANAGEMENT education, online or face-to-face, is on the rise with a spurt of Master of Business Administration (MBA) and other ancillary institutions taking wing with impressive courses and exciting offers, there seems to be a gap between understanding the needs of key stakeholders and the impact of social media/new media/Web 2.0 for brand building and recall.

More often than not, management education institutes focus heavily on college rankings and surveys. It fails to take note of the perception and voice of the parent, media, governmental industry, alumni and student communities.

In conducting studies for ranking, publications talk to only professionals and faculty in getting their data, which skews the perspectives from reality. Parameters like intellectual capital, infrastructure, placements, industry interactions, systems and processes are considered while arriving at the best set of institutes. Some studies take into consideration a ‘market focussed’ approach including ‘reputation’.

But what about considering the viewpoint of other stakeholders - brand recall among government bodies and signatories, perceptions among media, imagery amongst students - say coaching schools recruiters and vernacular media?

The industry has voiced it’s concerns on the demand-supply gap in minting management graduates and the quality of education in the country’s 1400 odd institutes.

Institutes, therefore, have a need to differentiate and market themselves not just based on their brand image but also by leveraging emerging trends in the web sphere.

I believe this is where social media and Web 2.0 trends come into play. Research indicates a tectonic shift from a ‘command and control’ to a more open ‘influence and persuade’ format in the new web world, thereby creating opportunities for management education institutes to tap and make a mark.

Trust among leadership and authority figures is also slowly eroding, putting more control in the hands of peers. Going forward, content co-creation and individualised information or user generated content will rule the way communication operates.

To top it all, recent news about the American slowdown, sub-prime crisis and the oil price rise have created a fear of job insecurity.

Management education colleges are expected to re-invent their methods of communicating and branding to get a larger mind-share of the community.

To begin with, it is important for leaders in the industry to understand the nuances of social media and Web 2.0 technologies while evaluating the impact they have on image, reputation, branding and communication. A recent example of a management institute facing off with bloggers ended with a bitter taste in the mouth for the former.

Over 44 per cent of the internet usage today, in India, goes in for only social networking with Orkut and Facebook among the favourites among students. Introspection on current methods of communication and knowing where and what their target audiences are visiting, reading and writing on the web world is the next important step in arriving at a coherent social media strategy.

Understanding what the institute stands for and chalking the key messages for its stakeholders is critical for creating a successful brand and reputation. Most management education websites provide information, which is one-sided and top-down in their communication. It is important to note that students today belong to the ’Generation-Y’ (born between 1980-94) and have a different perspective to life and career, while faculty and leaders who impart education are probably from Generation X or even the baby boomer generation. Sometimes, the information hosted may not resonate with the impression, which students and alumni carry creating ambiguity in the minds of readers.

Forums like Moutshut.com and message boards on student portals like Pagalguy.com allow management institutes to get a pulse of what is being discussed about the college and education options. How an institute plans its strategy to persuade and influence online discussions will be instrumental for success in the long-run. The key point is to be honest, transparent and upfront since the new medium is a great leveller. A case in point is the American election and how mistakes and cover-ups were exposed on social media sites and eroded Hillary Clinton’s chances for the Democrat ticket.

Today, recruiters tap social networking sites for potential candidates and some organisations hire close to 15-20 per cent by browsing pages of online participants. Are management education institutes thinking of the imagery these students are portraying and how they can appeal to recruiters?

The question is: Are management education institutes willing to relinquish control and be open about how the various stakeholders can be involved in important decisions? The opportunities are manifold. Organisations like IBM have risen to the challenge creating a blogging policy with the help of employees using wikipedia as a collaboration tool. Do management education leaders emulate it by co-creating a syllabus with students and parents? Or a policy for internet usage with the student and alumni communities? Or arrive at a guideline on plagiarism with the help of students to avoid the need for using expensive software and monitoring? Is there an online risk strategy in place for a potential crisis? Does it mean the end of the dean’s formal letter in the institute newsletter? Is there a need to address blogs penned by students? Can there be an internal knowledge management portal for students, faculty and other stakeholders?

A deeper understanding of the medium, its potential and the risks involved will work in the favour of management education institutes if they need to survive the next wave called Web 2.0.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

CAT to be held in November

The Common Admission Test for admission into Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) will be held on November 16 this year.

The IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow Kozhikode, Indore and Shillong today said in a notification that the sale of application forms for CAT will start from Monday at the Axis Bank branches across the country till August 8.

The application forms could also be obtained from the IIMs counters till August 13, the notification said.

The intake at the elite B-schools have been increased this year with the government having set up a new IIM in Shillong.

More than 2.5 lakh candidates had appeared in the CAT examination held in November last year.

The last date of submitting the CAT application forms is September 5.

The number of seats will also be increased by the IIMs to implement the reservation for OBC candidates from this year.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

More students are doing social work to make their CVs more attractive to companies, foreign varsities

Raghav Agarwal, a first-year MBA student at the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, runs a free website along with his brother which provides previous year’s exam papers of about 15 Mumbai schools. Aim: To make exam preparations simpler.

Tucked neatly within the folds of charity, however, is a hard copy of his curriculum vitae.

Agarwal is among a growing number of students who are doing social work to make their CVs look better. Companies in India and universities abroad admit that they do take more kindly to those who take kindly to others.

“Giving back to society even when done with the intention of sprucing up the CV is a very positive thing because ultimately every contribution counts,” said 21-year-old Agarwal, who plans to work on completion of his MBA.

Education counsellor Viral Doshi catered to over two hundred students in the last academic year alone, all of who mentioned social work experience. He says the competition to study abroad is so intense that a lot of students end up applying with similar scores and recommendations. At that point, universities look at the student’s extra-curricular activities, including how they have given back to society.

“However, it is important for students not to get carried away by making false claims, as the actual involvement of the student in any initiative can be gauged from the essay they send with their applications,” said Doshi.

Companies agree social work is a plus on the resume. “We look to recruit individuals with a well-rounded personality. Participation in social work gives students a lot of vital practical exposure,” said P.S. Deepa, Manager, KPMG Advisory Service Private Limited. “On interaction with the candidate, we can gauge their extent of involvement.”

While the National Service Scheme has been there for decades, now institutions themselves are forming social work cells. The Social Responsibility Forum (SRF) at NMIMS University, Vile Parle, organises events like blood donation drives, tree plantation drives and a socio-economic business plan contest round the year. This year, 100 students are expected to enroll for such work, compared to 50 in the last year.

Sumit Kumar, a second-year NMIMS student, undertook a project on micro-finance with a team, which exposed them to the market situation in villages. “Listing my work on the CV certainly gives me an upper-hand once I have been shortlisted by a prospective employer,” he said.

Students of Welingkar Institute of Management, Matunga, had a three-hour lecture on corporate social responsibility from Ujjwal Banerjee. The enthusiastic students are already building up a Young India Rural Entrepreneurs Fund.

Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE), a global non-profit organisation with its office at Springfield, Missouri, USA (India office is at Syntel, Seepz, Mumbai) encourages college students to formulate business models which make the community self-reliant. The college with the best project from each country is selected to participate in the international competition, judged by some of the biggest corporate houses in the world.

“Students associated with SIFE automatically get more attention from universities worldwide. Even companies prefer recruiting students with some background in the social sector because they know that in case of any emergency, they have a pocket of individuals who can always be banked on,” said Malathi Kembhavi, Country Head, SIFE India.

Jai Rohra, public relations head of the HR College SIFE team, said working for a social cause would add immense value to his CV because many companies ran community-based business models.

“SIFE, which is associated with multinationals like KPMG, Syntel, PWC, HSBC and Reliance Money, is a good opportunity to showcase your talent, as these companies are also looking out for prospective employees who know how to work in a team and have strong leadership skills,” he said.

However, not every student finds formulating business models easy. Many opt to assist established non-governmental organisations instead.

But groups like Akanksha insist on volunteers spending a few months at least teaching underprivileged children.

“We like to have stability here at Akanksha. The children wait in anticipation for the volunteers to come which is why we prefer if the volunteers are regular and take their work seriously,” Avantika Sinha, HR Manager, Akanksha.

Jumana Dohadwala (19) is the joint secretary, National Service Scheme, Jai Hind College. She is pursuing her SYBA with English honours for which she needs to compulsorily complete 30 hours of social work over nine months (one academic year). Being a member of the NSS also makes it mandatory for her to do another 40 hours over the same period.

However Dohadwala, having enjoyed her work so much with Akanksha, which involved helping the teachers there teach the children at Akanksha, far exceeded the minimum 70-hour requirement.

“There are those who do social work to spruce up their CVs and those who do it from their heart. I derive satisfaction from my work. If doing social work for one’s CV gives a student satisfaction then so be it,” she said.

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IIPM makes business education truly global

THERE is excitement in the air and there seems to be no stopping IIPM from taking giant strides in globalising Indian business education. This year IIPM has placed a record 2,670 students through campus recruitment and the number keeps increasing. The big news, however, is that international placements have jumped to 165 this year. This figure is second only to the best in the country. An achievement, but the institute is not sitting quietly on its laurels. Through curriculum and global networks, it hopes to place many more students internationally in the years to come. `Next year we hope to have the highest international placements in India,’’ says a spokesperson.

International placement is only a part of IIPM’s global initiatives. Sources say that IIPM is in the process of launching an international programme in August (details are not available because of non-disclosure agreements).

IIPM is also forging a number of international tie-ups with leading B-Schools and organisations across the globe, for their Global Internship Programme called GOTA. The internship programme is a mandatory component of IIPM’s curriculum and all students get a chance to travel overseas to experience first-hand how world class organisations work.

Organisations that have participated in this programme in the past include Nestle, Credit Suisse, IMD, UNCTAD, Michael Page, World Bank, Novartis, WTO, Honda Japan, Suzuki, ING, Emirates Bank, Amas Bank, Sulzer, among others.

Indranil Das (dean-Global Alliances) says, `this is a unique concept, and will go a long way in changing the face of business education in India. We are committed to deliver the best practices in education to all our students.”

Apart from this, as a part of its global thrust, IIPM is also ensuring that students enjoy a global exposure on the campus in India. Professors such as Philip Kotler of Kelloggs School of Business, Gita Gopinath of University of Chicago Graduate Business School, Akash Deep of Harvard University Sunil Gupta of Columbia Business School, Prof. Tom Kirchmaier of London School of Economics, Prof Rick Aubry of Stanford University, Prof Ari Ginsberg of NYU STERN, Leigh Hafrey of MIT Sloan School of Management, Andre Laurent of INSEAD and Johannes Pennings of the Wharton School have visited IIPM and interacted with students and industry leaders in the past few years.

While these professors came to deliver lectures on specific topics, professors from NUS, Singapore (ranked among the top three B-schools in Asia) are delivering a seven-week intensive course on Investment Banking (IB) at IIPM. The course aims to provide IIPM students an edge when it comes to placements in the Investment Banking sector next year. Prasoon S Majumdar, all India dean-academics says, “with this programme, our students would have an advantage in the investment banking sector, they can hit the ground running while other MBA candidates would have to still go through training on the job for the first few months.’’ Thetop100 students selected from all IIPM branches will attend this course and get a joint certification in IB.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

ISB Students Learn Management Lessons from Sports

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, Wednesday, July 09, 2008 (Business Wire India)
Students of the Indian School of Business (ISB) learnt key management lessons from the field of sports. Helping them understand this was Dr Richard Charlesworth, renowned international hockey player and coach from Australia. He spoke to the ISB students on ‘Leadership, Teamwork, Strategy & Motivation’. The talk covered strategies and systems for achieving success, both in business and the sports arena.

The students were deeply impressed with the talk. Speaking on what he learnt from this experience, Prashant Purushottam, student, Class of 2009 at the ISB said, “Not only do we get to learn from international gurus at the ISB, but also interact with such legends. Meeting these great minds helps me to constantly challenge existing beliefs and learn new ways of thinking. Whether it is business or sport, I learnt that the nature of competition is truly international and benchmarks are set at a global scale.”

This talk was arranged by Viren Rasquinha, student, Class of 2009 at the ISB and former captain of the Indian hockey team. The ISB has a diverse student body and this diversity provides a holistic learning environment in many ways. Students from different backgrounds bring fresh perspectives to issues and case studies discussed in the classroom and this contributes to stimulating and challenging classroom learning. Earlier, Prashanth Hariharan, another ISB student, organised a session on ‘Appreciating Indian Classical Music’. Prashant is an accomplished carnatic musician besides being a rocket scientist.

Speaking on an important requirement for a good leader, Dr Charlesworth said, “Understanding the team players is critical for a leader. A leader has to constantly listen to what his team is saying. Working with the team is a moral choice – it is about doing the right things at the right time for the right reason.”

While sports and business may appear to be different, they, in fact share several similarities and this made for a insightful learning for the ISB students.

A key learning from the talk was that a good leader is one who is able to create a ‘leader-full’ team instead of having one to lead the team. He should be able to appreciate the diversity in the team and allot roles based on their individual strengths. A leader should also be an active team player. A good team player is one who has faith in the team’s decision and is committed, even though it may not be his preference.

The ISB also organises the ‘Business & Arts’ programme every year, where students have the opportunity to interact and learn from eminent artists and learn alternate ways to think creatively.

About the ISB

The Indian School of Business is a premier management institution established in 2001. In a short span of seven years, the ISB has successfully pioneered several new trends in management education in India and has established itself as a leading B-school across the world. In both its Post Graduate Programme in Management and Executive Education Programmes, the ISB invites high calibre international faculty from reputed B-schools to teach and participate in collaborative research with the strong pool of research oriented, resident faculty. The ISB has academic associations with the Kellogg School of Management, The Wharton School, and the London Business School.

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

The CAT comes Calling

An oft repeated query of CAT aspirants is: “How much time do I need to prepare for the CAT?”A suitable analogy to this query would be the question: “How much time would it take to reach New Delhi railway station?”

The answer is dependant on three things:

a) What is your starting point?

b) At what speed would you be travelling? and most importantly

c) Would you be taking the straight line approach to the destination or would you be taking a circuitous route?

Experience and past records show that unlike university exams, where there is more clarity about minimum and maximum preparation time, the CAT is an exam which subscribes to neither. One sees students clear the CAT in as less as three to four weeks and then there are students at the other end of the spectrum, who do not clear it even after three or four years.

ISSUE 1: When planning your preparation, be task-oriented and not time-oriented

In simpler terms, focus on defining the quantum of work rather than defining the time schedules for the work. Your focus should be on what work you need to do, rather than focusing on the time dimension of your preparation.

So instead of trying to explore questions like: “How much time should I devote to which subject on a daily basis?,” think of how much work you would need to do on a particular subject in order to shift your ability level from your starting level to the desired level.

For instance, if your current ability in the subject of quantitative aptitude is in the below 50 percentile level and you aspire to move your percentile to the range of 95 percentile plus — you would broadly need to do anywhere between 4000 to 6000 questions during your preparations. (Depending on how much you can learn from every question).

Thus, how much time it would take on a per day basis then is immaterial. All that matters is whether you have completed your work or not.

Similarly, you should try to define the outline of work based on the following parameters:

-How many questions do you plan to do in each area of Quants before you go for the CAT?
-How many passages on reading comprehension do you intend to solve before you take the CAT?

-How many questions on areas like reasoning, data interpretation etc do you intend to solve prior to taking the CAT?

-How many tests do you intend to solve prior to taking the CAT?

Once you have drawn outlines for each area, you can easily work out how much work you need to finish by the end of the current week.

ISSUE 2: Do not try to balance your preparations on a daily basis, but balance your work on a weekly basis

Attempts to balance work in areas such as English, verbal ability, reading comprehension, quants and data interpretation and reasoning on a daily basis, would only lead to frustration. Instead, you need to ensure that you maintain equal emphasis on each area of preparation on a weekly basis. In other words, on a weekly basis you could plan days on which you are only doing Quants and other days where you might only be doing reading comprehension.

ISSUE 3: Learn to enjoy your work and do not look at it as a burden

Aristotle had once remarked: “Find a job you love and you will never have to work a single day of your life.”

Preparations for aptitude exams especially the CAT, if taken up through the right intelligence development approach, could turn out to be the most entertaining study process you have ever gone through. In fact, the enjoyment of the preparation process is one of the common features observed among successful students.

So, take a reality check on how much you are enjoying quants, data interpretation, language and vocabulary preparation. In case you have started to look at any of this as a burden, there is something seriously wrong in the way you are approaching the exam. Try to change the way you perceive the work you are trying to do. CAT preparation, and all its components, is extremely enjoyable if you approach it in conjunction to improving your thought process, basic intelligences and your exposure.

ISSUE 4: A paradox: Make CAT the most important thing in your life at the same time reduce the importance of CAT in your life

Paradoxical as the above statement may seem, there is a perfectly logical explanation. While you are preparing for the exam, you would be required to make sacrifices and adjustments to your life in such a way that you will have to be mentally prepared to leave everything else in the process of CAT preparation. Thus, while preparing you should be working as if there is nothing more crucial in your life than the CAT.

At the same time, by design, you should try to reduce how important the result of the CAT is for your life. Hence, you should have a back up plan for a situation wherein you would be failing in the CAT. Having this plan ready ironically would help you take the pressure of performance off your shoulders resulting in your best chance of belling the CAT.

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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Pursuing a MBA through distance mode has its merits

I am an engineer (41-year-old) with almost 19 years of work experience. Right now I am working in a senior management position at a bank. I want to do an MBA course from a good business school before making my next career move to a top management position. I am looking to do an online or part-time MBA course or a short duration, full-time MBA course. Please suggest some alternatives.

Yashpal

You can take a distance-education MBA such as offered by Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi (www.ignou.ac.in) and All India Management Association (www.aima-ind.org). Online or satellite-based management courses usually lead to a post-graduate certificate, not MBA. You could consider the executive MBA at a prominent business school or take up the programme offered by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (www.isb.edu). Part-time MBA programmes can only be pursued in the city where you are located. Hence, keep track of the admission notifications in the prominent dailies to identify suitable choices. A well-structured resume and the services of placement consultants could help in exploring the job market even now.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I am a chartered accountant and a BCom (Hons) from Delhi University. I have recently appeared for CPA examinations. I am working with a public sector unit NBFC in treasury functions (fund raising). Please suggest how should I plan my career if I want to start my own enterprise.

CA Jitender Gupta

Work experience will give you the opportunity to observe, and learn through interaction with peers. It can be used to clarify the type of work that would be suitable for you. As a chartered accountant you can set up your own practice. If you were to join a CA firm or a consultancy, you can get first-hand exposure to a lot of possibilities. If you want to set up some business that does not refer directly to your training as a CA, then you have to familiarise yourself with the same either by researching, or by working in such an enterprise or by taking up an entrepreneurship training such as offered by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Institutes (www.sisimumbai.com/ msmedi/othermsmes.html).

PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS

After my BCA, I am pursuing MBA in public health informatics from Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi. What are the job opportunities and salary I could expect?

Naqiah Bashir Wani

Public Health Informatics is concerned with the systematic application of information and computer sciences to public health practice, research and learning. You would find placement in health service facilities and consultancies, in teaching and research. The most direct feedback about your placement prospects would be from the placement cell in your college/institution. The profile of recruiters would indicate the remuneration package. It could range from Rs 3.5 lakh upwards depending upon the location and employer.

CHEF

I am did my class 12 from commerce stream with computers. I aspire to become a chef. What is the admission criteria, subjects to be studied and other requirements? Please write about the top institutes in this field.

Shantanu Singh

Most courses are targeted at students who have completed class 12 in any discipline. The training programme includes both theory and practice of food production, bakery & patisserie, nutrition science, hygiene and sanitation, food and beverage service, food production and planning, food presentation and styling, operations planning and development, human resource management, gastronomy, catering law, communication skills, front office management, sales and marketing, financial management, French and computer application. The selection comprises a written test and a personality assessment. The written test evaluates numerical and reasoning, ability, proficiency in English and general knowledge. Communication skill, alertness and general awareness are assessed during the process of personality assessment. Prominent institutions include the Culinary Academy Of India, Hyderabad (www.iactchefacademy.com), International Institute of Culinary Arts, New Delhi (www.chefiica. com), Academy of Culinary Education, Goa (www. acegoa.com) Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology & Applied Nutrition, Mumbai (www.ihmctan.edu) (International Chef Diploma), AK Hafizka College of Hotel & Tourism Management Studies and Research, Mumbai (www.anjumanihmct. org), Institute of Hotel Management, Aurangabad, (www.ihma.ac.in), as also under the Systematic Training and Education Programme (STEP) with focus on Kitchen operation by Oberoi hotels (www.oberoihotels.com/careers/html/career/index.htm).

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Sunday, July 6, 2008

Education fair for MBA aspirants in Delhi

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New Delhi: The QS World MBA Tour, the world’s leading series of career and education events, will organize a one-day fair for aspiring MBAs in the capital tomorrow.

The MBA fair will be held at the Hyatt Regency (Ring Road) in New Delhi tomorrow between 2 pm and 6 pm.

More than 30 B-Schools from across the globe including Toronto -Rotman, IE Business School, Bond, Cornell-Nanyang, Ashridge Business School, Hult, U21 Global, Durham and ESMT will participate in the MBA fair.

The London School of Business & Finance, the only UK based institution to offer dual programmes combining an internationally recognised MBA or MIB with ACCA, CIM, CIMA or CFA qualifications, will also be a part of the MBA fair.

Participants of the QS World MBA Tour, which will visit 50 cities in 32 countries this year, include 17 of the top 20 US business schools and all of the leading European business schools.

The fair will provide students a chance to interact with the leading international business schools and short-list the best option available to them.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, Managing Director of QS told NNE, “It is the perfect chance to make an impression face-to-face with the very people reading your application forms, and that is invaluable to gain an edge in this tough field. The QS World MBA Tour provides the best step in the application process, the opportunity to ask intelligent, tailored questions on topics like personal fit, career opportunities, school specializations and financial aid.”

Interested students can register for the MBA fair at www.topmba.com.

Indian graduates have been constantly seeking entrepreneurial, management and leadership skills to fast track their careers. International and local business schools have reported the increased numbers of Indians on their MBA programs.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Business Today-Nielsen B-school Survey 2008

Rank. Institutes

1. IIM-A

2. IIM-B

3. IIM-C

4. SIBM Pune

5. IIM-L

6. XLRI

7. JBIMS Mumbai

8. IIM-I

9. ICFAI Hyderabad

10. FMS Delhi

(Source: Business Today Edition - July 13, 2008)

Friday, July 4, 2008

Subprime hits IIM intern intake too

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MUMBAI: The subprime crisis seems to have spread its reach to the IIMs as well. Being a student at one of the premier B-schools might have meant getting an easy entry with big companies for summer internships, but the 2007-09 batch had a slightly tougher time. Major financial companies, that recruited from the various IIMs, took in less number of students this year. Lehman Brothers, which recruited 17 students last year from IIM-A, picked up only 15 this year. In a similar trend, Merrill Lynch which picked up 14 last year, took in one less this year.

At IIM-B, Lehman recruited 13 students this year when compared to 17 last year. Merrill Lynch picked up 10 students this year, five less from previous year. Both these firms have been badly effected by the ongoing crisis in the global markets. Lehman cut over 1,300 jobs while Merrill Lynch laid off more than 1,100 people. Incidentally, global firms such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, which have not been severely effected, have increased their intakes this year.

Consulting firms McKinsey, Bain and AT Kearney also recruited less this year. Last year, their combined intake was 11 while this year, it stood at eight. In a sector-wise break up of summer internships, the intake by the financial sector dropped from 57% last year to 35.9% this year at IIM-A. Consulting and marketing, however, increased from 17% and 14%, to 22.4% and 20.5%, respectively. PE firms like Blackstone, Temasek Holdings, ChrysCapital, Greater Pacific Capital and Sabre Capital made the most of this and recruited a number of students from B-schools.

IIM-B placements chairman Sourav Mukherji, however, does not read too much into this. He says, “The placement interviews are done in November of the previous year. There are always fluctuations. During the placements they did not mean much, but if you are to look at the numbers now, it might seem like a change.”

The industry, according to him, was forecasting a downturn and with no recoveries from the mortgage crisis and people hedging, intern numbers were marginally down for some companies but overall there was no change in summer placements. Incidentally smaller Indian companies seem to have been benefited by the global turmoil in the markets.

Indian I-banking firms like Edelweiss, Kotak, Mape Advisory, Enam Securities and ICICI Securities took in more than 25 people from IIM-B alone. Smaller companies like Angel Trade, Lodha Group and NIIT were also some of the recruiters at the IIMs this year.

Leaders must have the vision, passion and integrity: Dr APJ Abdul Kalam

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This is one MBA commencement speech that will perhaps be without a parallel for some time to come.While most other B-schools invited corporate honchos to inspire fresh batch of MBA students, Delhi University’s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) got none other than the former President of India and a respected thought-leader Dr APJ Abdul Kalam to ignite young minds.

Dr Kalam, while inaugurating the academic session 2008-10, delivered a 90 minute lecture for the FMS students. His address titled ‘The Nation and the Dynamics of Leadership’ focused on leadership development, importance of integrity and character-building, and India’s challenges and opportunities in next decade.

Emphasising the importance of leadership development in young MBAs, Dr Kalam offered his eight commandments. He said:

1. Leader must have a vision.
2. Leader must have a passion to transform the vision into action.
3. Leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path.
4. Leader must know how to manage a success and failure.
5. Leader must have courage to take decision.
6. Leader should have Nobility in management.
7. Every action of the leader should be transparent.
8. Leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity.

Dr Kalam recommended three books to MBA students which he said would help students discover themselves and follow their goals. The books are:

  • Michael A Roberto: “Why great leaders don’t take yes for an answer?” “This book discusses managing for conflict and consensus. Particularly read page 233-235, the essence of the book is “Great leaders, of course, behave as great teachers”, said Dr Kalam.
  • Stephen R. Covey (Author), David K. Hatch (Author): “Everyday greatness” “This book will give how the difficult social problems have been encountered and defeated through leadership and message of unity – coming together is beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success,” noted Dr Kalam.
  • Denis Waitley: “Empires of the mind”

Drawing on details from “Empires of the mind”, Dr Kalam highlighted the “paradigm shift” in management concept in the knowledge society. The authors have taken 10 aspects of the knowledge society of the present 21st century and visualize how it will be. It specially says that “what worked yesterday, won’t work today”. The 10 aspects of change are:

1. Yesterday – natural resources defined power
Today - knowledge is power
2. Yesterday - Hierarchy was the model
Today- synergy is the mandate
3. Yesterday – leaders commanded and controlled
Today – leaders empower and coach
4. Yesterday - shareholders came first
Today – customers come first
5. Yesterday - employees took order
Today – teams makes decision
6. Yesterday - seniority signifies status
Today – creativity drive status
7. Yesterday – production determined availability
Today – quality determines demand
8. Yesterday - value was extra
Today – value is everything
9. Yesterday – everyone was a competitor
Today – everyone is a customer
10. Yesterday - profits were earned through expediency
Today – profits are earned with integrity.

Dr Kalam added that while he agreed with most of the analysis offered by the book, he also has some different point of views. Said Dr Kalam, “I have analyzed 10 points, many aspects I agree, few I do not agree like point number 7 and 10. The 7th point, my view is, “competitiveness is the key which includes quality, cost effectiveness and just-in time delivery”. In 10th point, my view is, “Work with integrity and succeed with integrity”.”

Upholding the premise of the book, Dr Kalam added, “Japan has very limited natural resources. It imports iron ore and process produces the best of steel competitively for sale international market. Similarly, Finland has very limited resource. Nokia has attained global status and is producing major share of mobile phones for the international market. This shows that knowledge is power!”

Recounting his conversation with IT czar Azim Premji, Dr Kalam said, “After a visit to his establishment, I asked Azim Premji, “Azimji, your organisation and yourself have attained new heights and you are well known throughout the world. Can you tell me the secret of your success?” Premji said, “First, the sweat. Second, I love to delight my customers. Third, a bit of luck.” Dr Kalam added, “I personally feel that the luck will not come unless one works for the first two!”

As is well known, born on 1931 in Tamil Nadu, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, specialized in Aeronautical Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology. Dr. Kalam made significant contribution as Project Director to develop India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully injected the Rohini satellite in the near earth orbit in July 1980 and made India an exclusive member of Space Club. He was responsible for the evolution of ISRO’s launch vehicle programme. He led to the weaponisation of strategic missile systems and the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in collaboration with Department of Atomic Energy, which made India a nuclear weapon State.

In his literary pursuit four of Dr. Kalam’s books - “Wings of Fire”, “India 2020 - A Vision for the New Millennium”, “My journey” and “Ignited Minds - Unleashing the power within India” have become household names in India.

Dr. Kalam became the 11th President of India on 25th July 2002. His focus is on transforming India into a developed nation by 2020.

The young minds at FMS Delhi couldn’t have asked for a better start to their MBA pursuits!

Dr Kalam is the honorary adjunct faculty member of the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi and has been associated with FMS for a year.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Game for an online MBA?

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NEW DELHI: With the advent of the Internet and advancements in technology, schools have realised the importance of online education. In order to cater to working professionals, who don’t have the time to attend a full-time MBA programme, many schools have started offering online programmes.

Online MBA is an excellent option for working students: you can pursue an MBA and take up specialisations such as finance, marketing, international business, etc.

“One important benefit and difference between an ordinary MBA and an online MBA is the asynchronous sessions. When you have the time, you follow the forums and appear for the exams. Also, the opportunity to review classes and discussions several times is extremely valuable. This is the only way for many managers to do an MBA, and of course valuable for participants in different time zones. The challenge is to ‘virtually’ put your personality, skills and knowledge, and network across. Also you need more cross-cultural and social skills in order to succeed on the Internet; words are more apparent when written online,” says Sara Sjogren, a Swedish student pursuing an online MBA at IE Business School.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

ISB scouts for more intl students

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The Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, rated 20 in the global B schools league this year, is now looking to tap new markets - in terms of both student intake and companies that come for campus recruitment.

Towards this, the B-school is planning to conduct road shows in Moscow, Paris, Madrid, Zurich, and Milan among others in Europe. It is also visiting Australia for the first time this year in July.

Apart from these, it is also focusing on West Asia, particularly Dubai, where there is a high concentration of NRIs and international students.

Speaking to Business Standard, VK Menon, senior director (admissions and financial aid and career advancement services), ISB, said the institute was looking to tap new markets as it would increase the intake from the present 440 to 560 for the class 2010 (the admission will begin in 2009).

The exercise is in line with the efforts to have “a truly international mix of students.”

This year, at least a third of the batch comprises NRIs. There are 20 international students.

“We are looking to double the international students strength,” he said. The outreach programmes started three years ago but are now being pursued with renewed vigour due to the international ranking, he said.

The number of international offers is expected to increase to 150 for this batch from 110 in the last academic year, which saw as many as 60 companies from 23 countries.

According to Menon, ISB will also explore the Asia Pacific countries. There are students in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, who have academic qualifications and are looking for a value-addition to their careers. It will also conduct similar programmes in the neighbouring countries - Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

“We will foray into the Chinese market gradually,” he said, adding some companies there too had shown interest in the ISB students.

The US, however, will remain a potential market. “The US, which has a large chuck of students is an important market,” he said, adding the H-1B visas though are a problem with the US companies.

Nevertheless, a significantly number of US-based companies offer employment to the ISBians. The admission process would be the same for all students except that the international students would be given more time to apply.

“We expect at least 1,500 students to apply for the ISB after we conduct the information sessions,” Menon said.