Illustration: Uday Deb

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have decided to change their placement procedures. The fundamental difference is that instead of completing the exercise over a week, as has been the norm in the past, it will be conducted over a month or more. The change is decked up in supposedly student friendly measures and some of them are indeed what they claim to be. But that has not been the motivation for the revamp. The simple truth is that in the economic crisis last year there were several who did not find jobs in the placement week. Some of the IIMs had to do the unheard of — extend the placement season. The changes (see box) are to avoid another blow to their image.

How does it matter? The whole purpose of a management education — which has become extremely pricey in India in recent times — is to snag high paying jobs. Every year, Indian B-schools loudly proclaim their average pay and the number of foreign offers (which pay more than Indian jobs). They make even more noise about the best (read: highest salary) offer. B-schools vie (and, if one were to believe the numerous posts on MBA websites, lie) to top the corporate most-wanted lists. If the grads were suddenly seen to be finding it difficult to get jobs, their market value (the amount students are prepared to pay for the course) would drop. B-schools are a big business; there are more than 1,000 of them in India.

Even if the IIMs don’t need to do it, the lesser B-schools have to market themselves by hook or by crook.

The new system to be adopted by IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) from this year does away with the Day Zero (when the most-in-demand companies are called)-Day 1-Day 2 concept. Instead, companies will be called in cohorts (the word has an ominous ring to it). Thus all marketing companies will land up over one weekend and all finance or IT companies over another. There are some other bells and whistles like a Talentbouquet system that allows greater interaction between students and potential employers.

In US B-schools, this is the kernel of the placement process. Yes, there are “career fairs” where students interact face to face with recruiters. But a large part of the groundwork is done online. In India, job sites have made a splash online, but B-schools are still in the dinosaur age. There is a reason for this, of course. Companies pay good money to be allowed to recruit on campus. If online becomes the norm, this source of revenue will be cut off.

Given this environment, the rolling placement system was inevitable. The Indian School of Business — the highest-rated Indian B-school by foreign surveys — always had this approach. The Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur, moved to it last year. And IIM-A and IIM Calcutta are likely to opt for it from this year.

Who does it help? The institutes protect their image and augment their revenue; a one-two month placement season means more firms coming to campus, even if the exercise is conducted only over the weekends. The corporates also solve an image problem. Everyone wants to be a most-preferred Day Zero company; a big multinational company angrily opted out of placement at IIM-A when the students knocked it off their favoured list.

But does it help the students for whom the B-school itself and the placement are all about? The Talentbouquet certainly does, though there is already an informal grapevine in existence and MBA sites are trying to develop one.

But reasons such as giving students a more leisurely approach to placement to find a better fit are all bull. The entire two months will be a washout as far as academics is concerned. And ask anybody: a week of high pressure is preferred to two months of nervous nail biting. The student community is the key stakeholder in the B-school system. But individual students stay for only two years and can thus be safely ignored. The decision making is left to the administrators, academics and (sometimes) employers who are always good at taking care of No. 1.

COHORTS IN CAHOOTS

What is the cohort-based system?

• Process to take one-two months instead of six-seven days.

• More interaction time between students and firms.

• Firms form cohorts based on role similarity.

• Different clusters of cohorts come for two days on campus.

• Up to five rest days between cohorts so that candidates can recuperate and prepare.

• Launching internally developed Talentbouquet system that allows for interaction between firms and students using networking tools such as chatting, forums and alumni interaction.

• Finer details to be worked out in partnership with the recruiter community.

How is it different from the Day process?

• Increased focus on getting the right fit.

• Students get a better chance of making educated choices.

• No more slotting of firms into Day Zero and so on.

• Not restricted to just a few minutes of interview.

• Eases pressure and reduces stress on candidates.

• Talentbouquet allows students to learn more about firms, sectors and industries to make informed choices.

Source: coolavenues.com