Business Schools: Trouble in Paradise?

Business Schools: Trouble in Paradise? Things have never been better for business schools. College graduates in every country in the world vie for admissions to business schools, after, in many cases, spending months training for the tough entrance exams. Business Schools everywhere have the luxury of picking and choosing among the many who apply. In the United States, at the top business schools, only a small proportion of the applicants are admitted. In India, the choosiness is even more, with the IIMs admitting less than 1% of the nearly 200,000 who take the admission tests. The picture gets even rosier at graduation time with employers scrambling for a chance to make their pitch to students. Starting salaries for MBAs from the top business schools in every country beat that of any other profession by miles and have been in an ever increasing spiral for the last few years. At the IIMs, during the last few years the placement “season” lasts less than a week during which the entire graduating class is snapped up. At the top international business schools like the Harvard Business School and INSEAD in Europe, the feeding frenzy is as much. Why then, has there been a spate of articles in recent times from respected business school professors with titles like “How Business Schools Lost their Way”, and “The End of Business Schools” and “Can American Business Schools Survive?” What trouble do these savants see in the future while the rest of the world continues besotted with an MBA degree? To start with, when lists are drawn up of business leaders who really made a difference, people like Bill Gates of Microsoft or Dhirubhai Ambani closer home, MBAs don’t figure in them. More embarrassing, many (as in these two cases) do not even have a college degree let alone an MBA. When studies are done about the career progression after a few years of work, MBAs do not seem to have made significantly more progress than Non-MBAs. An internal study done by the prestigious US management consulting firm, Monitor, found that “people hired from high-end business schools were no better at integrative thinking than undergraduates …hired from the top-notch liberal arts programs.” Some would-be reformers of the MBA programs, like Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Business School, believe that much of what business schools teach: analytical tools like statistics and basic disciplines like economics and sociology are readily learned and imitated by any intelligent person. On the other hand, things like communication ability, interpersonal skills, leadership and, most importantly, “wisdom”, the ability to weave together and make use of different kinds of knowledge, are less easily taught. Paradoxically, these are the very skills that lie at the heart of a leadership role in management. Others like Warren Bennis and James OToole, (their article in the Harvard Business Review, “How Business Schools Lost their Way” is much quoted in this debate), say that there is actually a crisis in management education and trace this to business schools attempting to adopt a “scientific model.” This model attempts to treat management education as if it was something like physics or chemistry or biology whereas it is, in their view, more a “profession” like medicine or law. They see this distinction between an academic discipline and a profession as the central issue. Why have business schools adopted the scientific model of physicists and economists rather than the professional model of doctors and lawyers? They believe this arises from business schools attempting to gain scientific respectability and avoid the stigma of a vocational training centre. The scientific model, says Bennis, “advances the careers and satisfies the egos of the professoriate.” Business Schools have always had this conflict: is it their role to impart ‘training’ or is it to impart ‘education’? This is not a trivial distinction. Training is aimed at equipping students with a set of tools that they can immediately apply in their very first job. For example, teaching students to do a discounted cash flow analysis, that trusty tool of financial analysts, would is “training”. “Education”, on the other hand, is supposed to be longer lasting. For example, understanding the nuances of the difference between the law of diminishing returns and the law of increasing returns and more importantly how these two different theories came about may not do much for a student in his first job but would perhaps equip him with a lifelong ability to understand the drivers of business success and failure. The result of all this debate is a worldwide attempt to reform Business School curricula. One direction of this reform is to infuse more humanities in to the curriculum. James March of Stanford, is supposed to have taught his famous Behavioral Sciences course using novels like “War and Peace” as his textbook. There is more to learn about human behavior in these classical novels, he believed, than in articles in business journals. “Business schools”, says Bennis, “need a diverse faculty populated with professors who, collectively, hold a variety of skills and interests that cover territory as broad and as deep as business itself.” If paradise has to be regained in this age of specialization, is a broad-based humanities oriented curriculum the answer for business schools?

BUTTERFLIES IN STOMACH

A personal interview precedes a job whether the incumbent is being interviewed for entry level or for a CEO position. How experienced one may be in his career still there will be some nervousness on the part of the candidates appearing for interview. This we nickname it as “Butterflies in the stomach‿. In this article we are trying to give a few suggestions as to how one should mentally get prepared for the interview so that in addition to the subject knowledge and experience the body language and poise look positive to the panel of interviewers. An interview must be treated just as a conversation between you and the interviewers where you simply narrate sequentially about your work in such a way that you are able to sell yourself for the job. Be determined to enjoy the interview conversation thoroughly and make it an enriching experience. You can enjoy because there is nothing to lose if you do not get the job for the simple reason that you are already having a job or if it is your first job then this experience will make you more confident for another interview. Certainly you will be able to grab the job in a couple of next interviews. If you are well-prepared, you can use a personal interview to your advantage. A personal interview with the recruiter is a chance for you to sell your skills. If you drive the conversation in the direction you want, you will emerge as a winner. We are giving here a few points which can help candidates in appearing for interviews: When appearing for an interview, there are four main areas that you need to pay attention to Personal details, Academic details, Current affairs and ‘What you say’. Another aspect is maintaining posture during an interview which adds to your personality. Being a little conscious on the way you move and communicate helps in the interview. Listen carefully to the questions if not understood properly then do not stop the interviewer mid-way. Let him/her complete the sentence and then if you still have doubts ask him to clarify. Take a pause before answering and answer clearly and properly audible to the concerned. Do not sound too high nor too low. If you do not have an answer for a particular question, be honest and say that you do not know the answer. Interviewers respect honesty and integrity. Talking too much is not advisable because such candidates are disliked and misjudged instantly, so keep it short. Demonstrate enthusiasm but make sure you do not cross the limits. Do not be over confident about achievements. Interviewers misinterpret them as arrogance in your character. Look into the interviewers’ eyes and talk. It exemplifies confidence and honesty. If questions are being asked in English, reply in English only. Do not use other languages. Ask questions if required to the interviewer panel. Interviewers appreciate such enthusiasm but avoid getting into an argument with interviewer. Candidates with pleasant appearance hold interviewer’s interest. Speak in your natural accent. Do not put on an accent for an interview. Ending the interview >>> Before leaving the room, make sure you thank each of the interviewers for the time they have spared to listen to you and do not forget to collect your pen/pencil or any other stationery that you have kept on the table at the time of leaving. The last one place the chair in the original position before moving out.

REFERRALS IN RECRUITMENT

When recruitment is outsourced a single, entry level hire costs a minimum of Rs. 20,000, while this can go over Rs. 50,000 in those with 1-3 years’ experience and even a couple lakhs of rupees in case of senior-level recruits. When the same hiring is routed through employee referrals, the cost comes down by 80%. That’s where referrals – getting employees to recommend their friends—make great financial sense to enterprises.
With the cost of hiring starting to burn deep holes in their pockets, Indian tech corporates are betting high on the ‘Bring your Buddy’ policy.
Indian companies started looking at employee referrals from the end 2001. However, no one was really active till recently. On an average employee referrals account for over 40% of India’s IT hiring and it’s likely to cross 60% in the next couple of years.
Many companies have already put a 40% bar on outsourced hiring, and are busy dishing out attractive bonuses and cash incentives for employees to encourage referrals. Bringing buddies to work fetch employees between Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 depending on the position, profile and package, of the recruit.
SAP Labs India hired 60% of its 3,000 fresh recruits through referrals as against 30% the previous year. Cisco hires 55% to 60% of employees through referrals in India. Employees are the best means to attract new talent because they understand the culture and psyche of the organization.
HR-global head of TCS says the number of those hired through the employee referral channel has increased in the last two years by almost 175% in the company and expect this to increase further by 50% this year despite a higher recruitment base.
Employee referrals account for around 40% of lateral hiring in Infosys. It’s quality and cost-effective way of hiring said the VP & Head of HR Infosys Technologies.
Referrals reduce costs by over 60% and brought in around 2,000 of Patni’s recruits, of the total recruitment of 4,400.
Wipro Technologies, said employee referrals are also an effective tool to stem the tide of attrition. When friends work together, they are seen to be less likely to leave a company soon. Referrals help culture adaptation and tech familiarity