>MNC lure fades as Indian recruiters hold sway on campus

>The craze for an MNC job is finally fading. B-school students are veering towards domestic recruiters this placement season, as Indian companies acquire the professional edge and go global. At Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar, five Indian companies topped the recruitment charts Polaris, TCS, HCL Technologies, ICICI Bank and SBI Capital Markets.The story is no different on campuses like TA Pai Management Institute, XLRI and Welingkar Institute of Management, which have nearly completed placements.

Students at the IIMs, who are gearing up for placements, too believe a career with Indian companies is as challenging and rewarding as it is at an MNC. “Indian companies have changed from the earlier stagnant growth for employees and undefined job profile. Today, public sector companies too are projecting growth prospects to students,” says IIM Indore Chairperson (Placements) Prashant Salwan. Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), one of the early birds in the current placement season, saw domestic firms like Aditya Birla Group, ITC, Godrej Consumer, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors, Hero Honda and Axis Bank recruiting with increased vigour. “There was a time when a job offer with a foreign position would trigger excitement amongst all the students. Often, the entire batch would apply for it. Not any more,” says Munish Bhargava, Corporate and Placement Advisor. Students have become more role and job profile-oriented, which Indian companies are catering to, he adds.

The recession-proof nature of the Indian economy, which is expected to expand by 8.6% this fiscal compared with 8% last year, is another draw for students. At the same time, globalisation of Indian corporates and Indian innovation over the past few years have played their part. The launch of the world’s cheapest car Nano, consumer goods companies like Godrej and Dabur looking to go global, Tata Motors buying Jaguar Land Rover, Hindalco’s Novelis acquisition are just a few instances that have left a lasting impression on young minds. A recent study by consultancy firm Towers Watson has given the highest score to Indian employers in the area of career advancement opportunities. Almost 60% of the surveyed companies reported that opportunities for employees have improved over the past 12 months, in contrast to China at 54%. Developed economies like Japan and Singapore reported just 19% and 28% respectively.

More than anything else, hierarchical barriers have dissolved in domestic companies, as has the babu culture, where promoters would have the last word in everything. Senior executives now enjoy empowerment in their jobs and independence in decision-making. “Successful brands attract both consumers and employees. Earlier, India had very few such home-grown brands,” says Future Group (Head – Private Brands) Devendra Chawla, who has had stints in both MNCs and domestic companies. Indian companies are creating new marketplaces, innovating, leading, winning consumers as well as offering meaningful, satisfying job roles which allow talent to reach their potential, he adds.

“Indian companies have become employers of choice over the past two to three years. Students are increasingly looking at the job profile and not necessarily money,” says IIM-Lucknow Director Devi Singh. Experienced professionals too are seeing improved scope for growth in domestic companies, he adds. Salaries at Indian companies and MNCs are on par too. While such differences were as high as even 100% just four to five years ago, the slowdown has rationalised the gap. It is currently not more than 10% to 20% in entry-level and senior positions.

The Towers Watson study quoted earlier said Indian employers score relatively better in terms of salaries. While 37% of employers in the Asia-Pacific region believe they provide their employees an opportunity to earn higher levels of compensation to a great extent, the number is almost 54 % for India. Compensation differences have narrowed to negligible levels over the past few years, says Santrupt Misra, Director (HR) of Aditya Birla Group. The group offers pay packages that have made it one of the most preferred recruiters on campus. Dabur too claims to offer salaries that are 15% to 20% less than its global counterparts like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. “But our job profile will be much more challenging. In fact, in the IIMs, we are also going to offer foreign postings to the students,” says Dabur India Executive Director (HR) A. Sudhakar.

In the first quarter of 2011, India, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Turkey and Singapore reported the strongest hiring plans, according to a recent survey by US-based HR firm Manpower. “Management practices in domestic companies are no less inferior to their global counterparts,” says Misra. Globally, there is a lot of consolidation in the corporate world, and Indian executives find that unsettling, he says. In India, the downside of consolidation is not that bad, as job losses are curtailed, adds Misra. Ankul Mishra, a graduating batch student in one of the IIMs sums it up: “If the past decade was all about foreign MNCs, this decade will surely be about Indian MNCs. Be it job profile, salary, growth prospects or prestige nothing is less these days in Indian companies.”

Source: The Economic Times, February 18, 2011

>Campus Placements – Students eye better pay and job roles

>The good times are well and truly back on campuses. Several leading B-schools including XLRI-Jamshedpur, XIM-Bhubaneswar and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) have wrapped up their placements with big-ticket salaries and offers. Laterals too, have seen an unprecedented high, with salaries surging by as much as 25%. And while final placements for most of the IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) kick off in March, some institutes like IIM-Ahmedabad and ISB-Hyderabad have already got off to a rocking start.

Among other things, the placements at institutes like IIM-A and XLRI are indicators of the good times, believe students. “The economy is doing well. And if Placements 2010 saw a rebound, this time its that much more. At IIM-Calcutta, the number of pre-placement offers has jumped significantly, laterals have been going great and there’s a greater diversity of offers from big names across sectors,” says second-year student at IIM-Calcutta, Shreyans Mehta. Mansi Chitalia of IIM-Ahmedabad says improved market conditions have played a big role in the increased recruiter participation. “This is true across sectors, be it financial services, consulting, systems or marketing. Companies are also much more specific in terms of talent needs and are selecting campuses accordingly.” She, like many across IIM campuses, feel its likely to be a record-breaking year in terms of number of offers, and company participation. Most campuses have larger batch sizes this time around, but are placing more students in the same time period compared with last year. Salaries too are pegged to hit new highs.

There’s more reason for cheer. “During laterals, companies have offered senior profiles this time round, like some MNCs, which have offered the area sales manager role to students with three years work experience. This was something not seen in the past two years,” says Dhar. At IIM-Indore, second-year student Shyam Sunder R. too feels things are looking up. “Clearly the growth in the Indian economy is translating into better jobs and better packages. All sectors,including banking, consulting, IT, FMCG are doing well. Laterals have been good and the number of pre-placement offers is way more than last year. We are all upbeat. Better profiles and bigger packages are on the cards.” An IIM-Lucknow second-year student who has been placed during the laterals is gung-ho about the number and the quality of offers as well as the salaries. “Laterals are a precursor to the finals,so they are likely to be rocking as well.”

Source: The Economic Times, February 18, 2011

>B.Com., B.Sc. students pip B-school grads to jobs

>One of the most enduring family-room debates what should our child study is undergoing a transformation, probably led by the fact that the line between a once trite graduate course and an intense professional programme is blurring. Indian IT majors will probably tell you they were the first to discover the graduates when they invaded science colleges in Mumbai after facing a drought of programme coders. What started as a hunt for B.Sc. graduates about five years ago has not just picked pace, but also expanded.

Accounting and auditing firms are lapping up commerce students who have studied banking, and investment firms and marketing agencies are substituting their requirements for MBAs with those who have just tasted management education at the bachelors level in the BMS programme.

Last week, there was a frenzy on the Jai Hind College (Mumbai) campus when Google short-listed over 50 students. HR College (Mumbai), this year, was host to all the big four accounting firms. While Pricewaterhouse Coopers visited the undergraduate college for the first time, McKinsey is likely to storm in next year, said Placement Co-ordinator Bidia Batheja.

Global firms are hiring our students and placing them in exciting positions. Our students are not being approached for frontdesk or BPO jobs anymore. The average campus salary is in the range of Rs. 300,000, said KC College Principal Manju Nichani.

Management students often wonder how salary levels for them and for commerce students are similar. After all, management students who have invested good money would like to get higher salaries. We tell them that management students can have an edge over commerce graduates by taking one more degree, said Asha Aggrawal, Placement Officer at the college.

The trend at Edelweiss is similar to many other investment companies. Shaily Gupta, Group Head for HR, said they hire 200% more undergraduate commerce students than the candidates they select from B-schools now. Not only are they more affordable, but the undergraduates come with no baggage and have a high learning orientation, she added.

Source: The Times of India, February 18, 2011

>No permanent IIT foreign faculty

>In a major setback to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) plan, the Ministry for External Affairs (MEA) has rejected a proposal to liberalise visa norms to allow foreign teachers to take up permanent posts at the IITs. The MEA has refused to change the rules under which each foreign faculty m ember at the IITs needs to re-obtain a work visa every five years, top government and IIT sources have confirmed to HT.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had on September 11, 2010 announced the plan to allow the IITs to fill up to 10% of their permanent teaching posts with foreign faculty. The proposal — first reported by HT on September 2, 2010 — was approved by the IIT Council — the highest decision making body of the IITs — and is aimed at reducing a massive faculty crunch plaguing the IITs.

But the MEA’s refusal to allow foreign faculty to join with visas of longer duration than five years means that the IITs will not be able to offer permanent posts to foreign faculty. “We will need to continue to offer contractual appointments — something we wanted to, and quite frankly, need to change,” an IIT Director said.

Each IIT is facing a faculty crunch between 15 and 40% with a total of over 1,000 faculty posts vacant across the premier engineering schools. The Institutes have over the past year however received a number of applications from foreign faculty, including Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) keen to teach at the IITs. The IITs are arguing that permanent posts would help them lure the best of foreign teachers. All foreign teachers are at present required to teach as visiting or ad-hoc faculty.

Source: Hindustan Times, February 18, 2011

>IIMs trash HRD suggestions on teaching hours, smaller boards

>The faculties of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have trashed the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)-appointed committee reports on the new governance structure and teaching load, saying that they are based on incorrect data.

Faculty bodies at IIM-Calcutta and IIM-Bangalore have passed unanimous resolutions to set aside the reports which suggest reducing the size of IIM boards and societies and asking each faculty to teach for 160 hours a year. Other IIMs are likely to follow suit seeking broader consultation on the proposed reforms.

“We believe that these recommendations are the outcome of several wrong assumptions and incorrect data and would not allow IIMs to become global leaders. These changes, if implemented, will have a negative impact on the morale of the faculty,” IIM-B faculty said in a memorandum submitted to board of governors chairman Mukesh Ambani last week. They have now called for a fresh panel involving alumni and eminent academics to create a governance structure for long-term development of IIMs.

A five-member committee headed by IIM-Ranchi chairman R C Bhargava had recommended reducing the size of the IIM boards and societies by almost half, and allowing corporate bodies, individuals and alumni to become members of the IIM society by paying Rs. 200 million, Rs. 50 million and Rs. 30 million respectively.

The IIM-B faculty rejected the idea, saying “this will lead to a major structural change in the ownership of IIMs and would be completely against public interest. We believe that contribution for the society should be more in the nature of developing institutions rather than owning the institutions”.

The dons at the elite B-schools have also taken exception to the MHRD’s decision to fix a minimum teaching load for faculty which will be the same for all IIMs.

Source: The Times of India, February 17, 2011

>PMO settles turf war between health and HRD ministries

>The Health and Human Resource Development ministries have reached a compromise on regulating medical education and research. The National Commission for Human Resources in Health (NCHRH), piloted by the Health Ministry, will set the standards for university-level medical education. On the other hand, the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), piloted by the HRD Ministry, will set the policy guidelines for all medical research. Universities will also be free to have more exacting higher standards for which they will deal with NCHER.

The agreement brokered by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) will end the turf war between the Health and HRD ministries. This could mean that both bills could be finalised for introduction in the Budget session of parliament. There appears to be a move to bring in Rajashekharan Pillai, Vice-Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), as the chairperson of NCHER.

The need to apportion medical education between the two proposed regulators became necessary after HRD ministry appointed taskforce on NCHER suggested that higher education in all disciplines should be brought under the proposed over-arching regulator. The exception was agricultural education, since agriculture is a state subject. The move was opposed by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Law Minister Veerappa Moily, as both medical and legal education were to be brought under the NCHER.

The Health Ministry argued medical education was linked to the provision of health services. The Health Ministry’s regulator, NCHRH, was asked to oversee the availability of well trained and competent medical personnel on the ground. This it was argued would only be possible if there had control over medical education. The NCHER task force argued since all education was governed by the varsity system and there were multi-disciplinary areas of research, all education should come under one regulator.

The difference of opinion resulted in an intense turf war. So much so, that the Prime Minister’s Office had to intervene to resolve the situation. In a series of meetings presided over by TKA Nair, Principal Secretary to the PMO, the two sides sought to work out a compromise.

Source: The Economic Times, February 16, 2011

>IT sector in need of hands in all domains: Infosys CEO

>The IT sector is presently recruiting at a strong clip, with a demand for skills in multiple verticals, according to Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD of Infosys. Ahead of expansion plans for the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K) here of which he is chariman, Gopalakrishnan told ET that his company had already made 25,000 offers during this financial year. “We have made 25,000 offers in campuses this financial year, and our plans for the coming year will be disclosed in April,” he said, adding that there was a strong demand across various disciplines in the IT sector.

The IIITM-K is setting up a residential campus at the Technocity here, focusing on high power computing and information system management. IIITM-K’s Director-in-charge, Elizabeth Sherly said courses had been designed with the congruence of academics, research and industry requirements in mind. She said the 10-acre campus for IIITM-K in the Technocity campus would help the institute raise itself to a higher level, with the student capacity also moving up from the present level of 120 post graduate students to about 700 students pursuing Masters, M.Phil. and Ph.D. programmes.

The institute is proposing to launch four new schools in its new campus, namely schools for computer science and engineering, computational science, informatics, and humanities and social sciences. Sherly said inter-disciplinary education was a key area of focus, enabling students to tune their skills to contextual requirements.

Source: The Economic Times, February 16, 2011

>For laterals, IIM pay packets take vertical route

>IIMs across the country have reported up to a 25% increase in salaries offered to experienced professionals this year. The highest salary in the lateral placements process so far this year is Rs. 70,00,000 (US$ 150,000), offered to a student at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K), by commodities trading company Olam International. Olam has also offered this salary to students at IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). In some cases, lateral placements, which mark the beginning of the placements process at IIMs every year, have also reported up to 75% increase in the number of offers this year, over 2010.

Although the older IIMs — including the top three of Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — declined to share figures, the biggest gainers as of now appear to be the new institutes. IIM-K, for instance, has reported an increase of 20-25% in the average salary being offered by companies across sectors such as consulting, FMCG, financial services and IT. The highest domestic package on offer is Rs. 3 million, up from Rs. 2.8 million last year, while the highest international package is Rs. 7 million. Several firms such as Fujitsu, Lenovo, Thomas Cook, SunTec, EXL and the Manipal Group have offered senior managerial positions to candidates with as little as three years of experience.

“With the economy looking up, placement offers have been much better this year,” IIM-K Placements Committee Member Nikhil Rawat said. “Students have been able to secure profiles of their choice, and salaries have been significantly higher.” ICICI Bank and Deloitte Consulting have hired 16 students each from IIM-K this year, while Cognizant Business Consulting has picked up 13. Deloitte’s Chief People Officer Dhananjay Bansod said the company is offering 10-15% higher salaries at the IIMs this year, which works out to anywhere between Rs. 1 million and Rs. 1.3 million. The firm is looking to increase its manpower to 15,000 this year, about 3,000 more than the March 2010 headcount. “We expect a growth rate of 15% in India this financial year,” he added.

“This year 85% of the companies will be hiring fresh, according to our survey. This means there is a renewed competition amongst companies to get the best of talent from across institutes, on the back of a revived economy. They have to even compete with international companies for candidates. It’s natural for them to offer competitive such salaries,” says Shamita Chatterjee, business leader, information products and solutions, Mercer India.

IIM-Indore has seen a 10-25% rise in salaries for experienced candidates this year, with pay packets ranging between Rs. 1 million and Rs. 2.5 million. Consulting and IT have been major recruiters with firms such as Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, PwC, Cognizant Business Consulting, Infosys, Wipro Consulting, HCL and TCS picking up candidates. Besides these, companies such as Reliance Power, L&T, RIL and Adani Group have also recruited from IIM, Indore.

Salaries across IIMs had plunged by 25-30% after the global economic crisis hit the world in 2008-09. However, 2009-10 onwards, salaries started recovering by 10-20%. At IIM-K, for instance, average salary in 2007-08 was Rs. 1.48 million, which fell to Rs. 1.01 million in 2008-09 and rose to about Rs. 1.2 million in 2009-10.

IIM-Calcutta, which is just a month into the process, has already received 225 offers, including pre-placement ones. This is an increase of 75% from last year. “With more than 50 firms participating in the process this year, international companies such as Barclays, Olam International, McKinsey & Co, BCG, Bain & Co, AT Kearney, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have notched up an unprecedented number of hires.

Some of them had hired very few people, or given the institutes a complete miss during the slowdown,” said IIM-C External Relations Secretary Abhijeet Kamath. IIM-Bangalore, with a batch size of 348, has already received 96 offers from 31 companies. IIM-B career development services head Sapna Agarwal cautioned that though the number of lateral offers is higher this time than during the corresponding period last year, this could also be because of a larger batch size.

Source: The Economic Times, February 16, 2011

>Pearson wants to establish itself as an education company

>Pearson Plc, which recently bought a controlling stake of Indian education company TutorVista, wants to shed public perception of a publishing firm and establish itself more as an education service provider. Pearson India Chairman John Makinson, who recently visited New Delhi, said in an interview that school education is now one of its key focus in the country, which can be replicated in other nations such as South Africa. He also said the Indian government’s decision to open up the education market is a welcome move for global education firms. Edited excerpts:

How much is acquiring TutorVista going to help Pearson?
For the last three years, we have been focusing in the Indian education space. The two key areas are vocational education and school education space. Two years back, we had two partnerships, one with TutorVista, which was largely an online tutoring firm, and the other with Educomp Solutions Ltd., on vocational education. We had really not thought about the school education space. After talking to the TutorVista management, we realized they have a vision for school education. It sounded sensible to us and we thought of honing that in India. The challenge for a company like Pearson is it’s a large opportunity, which is scalable. It has to be delivered at a relatively low price. We have software, platform, we had other resources but we did not have the dedicated culture of growing schools. By combining the entrepreneurial skill of TutorVista with our global experience as a global education company, we thought we can achieve more success here.

Do you seek to grow as a bouquet in the education service sector by offering K-12 (class I through XII) education, vocational education and test-prep centres?
Yes, we see opportunity to grow in India in a whole lot of areas. We see opportunity in testing, in English language teaching, teachers training, in higher education space like curriculum designing. Some will be delivered through our partner Educomp Solutions in the vocational education space and some through this effort where we have acquired the majority stake in TutorVista. Some we may develop on our own. We will look at it case-by-case. If it is expanding schools we will do it through TutorVista and if it is college education (curricula and publishing), then we will do it by ourselves.

Running test-prep centres that coach students for engineering, management and medical colleges is a huge business. Will you focus on them?
Our general idea is to establish as an education service company and a technology-enabled service company. In test-prep, we may develop content, assessment capability. Maybe we will use some of the infrastructure of the TutorVista schools as test-prep centres, without opening a chain of test-prep centres across the country.

You have said that Indian education sector’s opening up is good for the world. Why do you think so?
I think there is a recognition in India that education is the fundamental enabler of India’s potential as a globally competitive service economy. If that is the target then education has to be in a broad way be the epicentre of government agenda… That recognition has led to a much more enlightened and open approach to education. There has to be a balance between public purpose and the commercial terms of education. We have to have a social purpose and a commercial purpose. I think the ministry of human resource development in the last two years has done a great job…

How much does India contribute to the kitty of Pearson?
At this moment a very small portion. We generally don’t split that number. But it is growing very rapidly. Today we employ 1,600 people in India. We will see that it grows.

TutorVista’s chief executive K. Ganesh says he sees this company a billion-dollar company in five years. If that happens, where do you see Pearson?
We want to establish ourselves as an education company (rather) than just a publishing company. There is a perception that Pearson is a textbook publisher, this should change. Yes, we do publish textbooks, but it is a pretty small proportion than what we do in education. Largely, we are producing digitally enabled content that is embedded in learning platforms. We need to get some recognition for that. With TutorVista deal, the perception will shift a bit. Ganesh’s vision about the company is not unrealistic.

Will you take this K-12 education model to other countries where you are growing, such as Brazil and South Africa?
Yes, we will. It will be a two-way spread. In Brazil…we give all kind of content to schools and we will see if that can be brought to India. In turn, if we become successful managers of K-12 schools, then it can be exported to Brazil, South Africa. If we develop a model in India and it can be replicated, then we will do that for sure.

Source: Mint, February 15, 2011

>US varsity ties up with Pune-based B-school

>The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), one of the state universities in the US, has entered into a formal tie-up with the city-based Europe Asia Business School (EABS) and academic service provider Global Talent Track (GTT) for setting up a centre for services excellence that will offer advanced study programmes in the infotech (IT) and management fields.

The EABS, which has campuses in Pune and Mumbai, was founded by Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar Technologies and Chairman of the CII’s IT and ITeS committee. While the GTT, which specialises in training students on vocational skills that will help them get ready for the industry jobs, is headed by Uma Ganesh.

As part of the tripartite arrangement, the centre for services excellence will conduct research as well as offer multi-disciplinary academic programmes in India, starting with an advanced programme in information assurance leading to a masters in engineering from the UCCS and a certificate programme in services marketing.

According to Uma Ganesh, “This collaboration promises a much-needed global education experience for students, bringing together the best of the academia and the industry of the two nations.” Ganesh said, “The UCCS has some of the most relevant programmes in IT and Management and also an outstanding programme taught through blended learning for healthcare and nursing and through our new global connect initiative. These are the first of several planned courses that we look forward to customising and offering, via the centre, to cater to the huge needs in India and Asia.”

The information assurance programme will be conducted at the EABS’ campus at Vimannagar, while the services marketing programme will be conducted at the Advanced Technology Laboratory near Wadia college, said a GTT spokesperson on Monday. The two new academic programmes will be launched from the academic year 2011-12. The UCCS has provided the academic backup for these programmes in terms of designing the course and faculty training, among other things.

Both the courses have been designed specifically keeping in mind the factors like India’s growing economy and the projected growth of sectors related to business, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare and media. These sectors are expected to create over 40 lakh jobs within the next two years. On the other hand, information security and IT risk have emerged as key concerns with the growing IT penetration across the country. Successful participation of the advanced programme offered in India will lead to a masters degree in information assurance, which is offered by the UCCS. The services marketing programme will also enable students to get fee waivers for the fully accredited MBA offered by the UCCS at its campus in Colorado Springs.

Source: The Times of India, February 15, 2011