|| Businessworld - The Mega B School Guide ||

Businessworld recently commissioned a survey of India’s top recruiters to find the answers. The survey was conducted by Executive Access, which is part of the Access Asia Group, an information and human resource conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong. More than 50 of India’s HR heads from companies such as Coke, Bharti, P&G, Gillette, Philips and Reckitt Benckiser took time off from their packed schedules to participate in the survey.

Perhaps the most important takeout from the survey is that recruiter perception still favours the old guard. We asked the recruiters to tell us which are the top schools on their hiring list. The names they came up with are interesting for one reason – there are practically no surprises here. So much for the hard-sell that new schools do on the basis of one ranking or the other.

The A-list (we haven’t actually ranked the schools) has all the usual suspects: the older IIMs, FMS, XLRI… No new school has been able to muscle its way into the Top 10 – not even the youthful IIM-Indore and IIM-Kozhikode. The all-powerful IIM brand doesn’t automatically guarantee a place in the recruiter’s mindspace.

There are more reasons to choose your school carefully. Although many recruiters do hire from schools other than the ones they visit, there are some who don’t feel the need to – at least, not at the entry level. Vasant Sanzgiri, senior VP-HR at Prudential ICICI AMC, says the company doesn’t look beyond its A-list at the entry level. “Our intake is small and we feel that the schools we go to have already done some of our shortlisting for us in their selection process.”

Narendra Nath Akhouri, VP-HR of Hero Honda Motors, says that the company has a set of favourite schools. “But one is not being elitist. It is a question of ‘culture fit’.

One or two years down the line when candidates (who have passed out from schools we don’t visit) approach us through the open-market recruitment, we are willing to look at them.”

Once they camp at the B-school, recruiters scout around for specific skills. Check out the skill-set you must arm yourself with at the B-school (see ‘What Recruiters Say’).

Don’t even think of overplaying that entrepreneurial streak during the placements: recruiters rated it as the least important trait they look for ina fresh grad. What matters most is the ability to work in a team and analytical - and problem-solving skills, in that order. Take every opportunity at your school to participate in team activities.

Companies like Dabur bring along their complete HR toolkit when they come to recruit on campus. “We use Thomas Profiling during campus recruitment to see whether the candidates have the traits that are important for us,” says A. Sudhakar, head of HR at Dabur. His advice is to to polish communication and presentation skills at the B-school, especially if you plan to apply for a marketing job.

Summers are fast becoming a very important filter in the recruitment process. Adil Malia, director-human resources, Coca-Cola India, says the company has been steadily shifting its focus to the summer-training programme over the last three-four years. “That’s when we get a chance to look at the candidate closely. We do a structured assessment centre and see whether the candidate has the competencies for success necessary in Coca-Cola.”

Nearly 60% of the recruiters surveyed feel the quality of summer training is very important. “If the project is done in another company, we still look at the quality and relevance of summers. If the candidate has a pre-placement offer, his resume automatically becomes more attractive,” says Joydeep Bose, general manager–HR at Wipro.

“The summer project helps you see whether the guy can deliver. Of late, people have come to value it more,” agrees Chandan Chattaraj, chief (HR), Jubilant Organosys.

Recruiters are looking for any cues that will help them make the right choice. “During the final placement you are under tremendous time-pressure to choose,” says Malia.

So look beyond the final placements data. Check out the kind of summers the
B-school can help you snag.

HERO Honda Motors doesn’t look for work experience in a freshly-minted MBA. At the most, they look for two years of work experience only. “We don’t have the internal systems for hiring people with work experience from the campus,” says Akhouri.

But for many recruiters, work experience that will allow the new MBA to hit the ground running is critical. Bharti Tele-Ventures picks up both freshers and lateral-hires on campus. Jagdeep Singh Khandpur, director (HR) at Bharti, expects freshers to finish their training and be on the job in three months. “The lateral hires have to start from day one,” says Khandpur.

This is true not just for a telecom company like Bharti, but across industries. “From 12-18 months, the training period for management trainees is coming down to 3-6 months. Today 18 months is a lifetime,” says Sanzgiri.

“With work experience you stand on the ground, you don’t fly,” is how Arun Kumar, HR head of CSC India, puts it. He feels that MBAs who come out of the school with work experience behind them make the decision to join a company only after proper analysis.
Problem is, unless you are an engineering graduate, getting the right kind of work experience is tough. “Companies like HLL take graduates from good colleges for their executive training programmes, but there are only limited opportunities,” says Sudhakar.

So what’s the solution? “In the future, both models – MBAs who are fresh graduates and MBAs with work experience – will co-exist. The former model will definitely stay since there is too much pressure to get jobs after graduation. It works from a recruiter’s point of view as well – here is an opportunity for me to mould them according to our concepts and values,” says Malia.

This is the big one. What is the value of a top-of-the-line foreign degree in India? Ninety-four percent recruiters said they would not give it any more weightage than the Indian degree. “We do not give weightage to foreign universities,” says Sunil Durani, HR director at P&G. This is the short answer most respondents gave us.

The reasoning they follow is simple: The Indian market is different from any other market. As Sanzgiri says matter-of-factly: “People do apply to us, but I would have to spend time acclimatising them.”

But is it just the demands of the local market that make Indian MBAs attractive? Sudhakar doesn’t think so: “Generally speaking, Indian MBAs are superior to their counterparts. They are certainly superior to Australian MBAs and those from second-rung global business schools.”
This ringing endorsement is also an acknowledgement of the changing character of schools in India. “Our B-schools are evolving,” says Khandpur. “They are modernising their curriculum and creating international cases that are relevant.”

The consensus is that even if an MBA from a leading global B-school prepares you for the world, it doesn’t necessarily prepare you for India.

The All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE),

which is the apex body for monitoring B-Schools, is fast losing its relevance. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents felt that the AICTE accreditation was not important (also see Pritam Singh’s, director of IIM-L, interview elsewhere in this issue).

“We don’t really look at accreditation,” says Chattaraj. “AICTE needs to create better filters for their processes.” Even R.S. Nirjar, member-secretary of AICTE, frankly admits that the body needs “measures so that it can control syllabus, faculty and admissions. It (management education) is being run entirely as a commercial enterprise, you need drastic action.”

Sorry guys. There goes one filter you could have used to shortlist schools. So what should you try now?

Turn the page.