Next placement season could be tougher
Let’s face it - working professionals who invest a year or more of their time and money at B-schools are obviously looking at bettering their career prospects. They expect their time spent in the B-school to catapult them into the big league of blue blood companies, fattest pay checks and cushy jobs in exotic locations. And why not? By extension, the B-school is expected to be a headhunter, linking its students with the right employers. In today’s world of change, where the focus is more on “customer pull”, as against “supplier push”, a premier MBA school needs to focus on “customer centricity” (where both the students and recruiters are its customers).
We are all only too aware of the uncertainty the world economy has plunged into post September 2008 and, by extension, the prospects of millions. Interestingly, as a crippling side-effect of this, the MBA placements were significantly affected the world over.
Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, also faced the same challenges of B-school placements as did the other schools. Non-returning companies, reduced number of offers by those returning, addition and servicing of a totally new set of companies leading to disproportionate returns (on comparison of effort expended and placement gained) on the one side, and mounting student expectation in terms of profiles, international placement opportunities and CTCs on the other, were all part of the game.
The only saving grace was that we anticipated this and took it upon ourselves, as early as September 2008, to modify, identify and execute newer and tougher strategies to successfully complete the placements for the class of 2009.
Some strategies we had adopted were to broadbase our prospective employers, be in constant touch with all of them and a rolling placement format as compared to the previous years where we followed a ‘placement week’ format. Starting the placement earlier, categorisation of the employers based on several indices, conscious attempts at getting the students to set realistic expectations, were some of the strategies we put to use - all of which went a long way in augmenting regular placement efforts.
Another important task is that while constantly servicing the companies, don’t let students forget that B-schools do only the marketing and it’s the students who have to do the sale. It is their sole responsibility to clinch the final deal.
It also pays to continuously work on the students to help them prepare for the interviews, to update their general and subject specific knowledge and to groom them on presentation and other soft skills. The placement process aims at co-creation of value for all parties - student, recruiter and the school.
In my 36 years as a management educator, I have yet to see a worse-hit placement season. It is not any different in the USA. Several students have taken the entrepreneurial route in the hope of establishing successful careers. Though Great Lakes may have succeeded in placing its graduating students, the next year is already upon us and promising to be tougher than the last. We are already armed with plans and proposals to do better and differently.
The trick is to leverage our experience, exploit the outcomes of the past experiments and manage the expectations to achieve the benchmark of 100 per cent placement.
'Bala' V. Balachandran is a Professor Emeritus of Accounting, Information and Decision Science at Kellogg School of Management. He is also Founder and Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai.
