Career Management in India

I very much liked this post by Mrityunjay Kumar, who writes about career management in India , great insight, have a read....

Mrityunjay Kumar:
In this post, I want to explore what career management means to people in India and the reasons behind why it has evolved this way. Understanding a bit of history can help us understand future trends. In a subsequent post, I will explore how this has proved detrimental to career management/counseling as an industry. I will also provide some ideas on how to do well in spite of such advice not being readily available.

Most of the job growth in Indian industries has happened in the last 10-15 years (post-liberalization era). This has largely been driven by services and export expansion and growth, which has fueled a knowledge-driven economy. Most of this growth has benefited the Indian middle class families who have long invested in their child’s education. Growth in ‘knowledge-based jobs’ created great opportunities of these educated youths, creating a ‘new middle class’.

Given that this economic phase is so new, there are very few success stories and role models for these new careerists, and hence they resort to their parents’ experiences, including the fact that Indian culture places lots of emphasis on respect for elders and their experience. Friends and family have acted as career counselors for most of the youngsters in this era and continue to do so (more on this here). However, this means careers and choices of the current economy get compared to those of the old economy. Also, the previous generation has seen poverty much more closely, creating a survival instinct and craving for economic stability that kicks into every advice they give to these new economy careerists.

Here are some characteristics of Indian career model as shaped by these realities:

1. A large number of young job seekers come from middle class which has valued steady stream of money over any kind of risk-taking. Hence stability of jobs and brand name of the company play a big role in how they choose their first job and when they change jobs.
2. Career roles for parents have been derived from the government and a few manufacturing companies, where laborers work and managers direct work. Therefore, being a people manager is a bigger achievement and growth indicator than being an expert programmer for most parents (this mind set creates a strange problem in IT sector which I will talk in my next post).
3. There is very little job diversity and a large number of aspiring candidates, all of whose resumes look alike because of cookie-cutter nature of Indian education (very little flexibility). This means intense pressure for getting a job quickly, there is no time to manage career.

Of course, there are some ‘new careerists’ who avoid this career model:

1. Some are very intelligent, getting into India’s world-class educational institutes, which mean they leapfrog the competition entirely and never have to worry about the job again because they have a brand they can reuse. Remember, brand counts a lot because of stability it provides. (I’m reminded of graduating from Harvard here in the States — Scot)
2. Some are very ‘informed’ in that they know about the latest job trends (either because they live in tier-A cities or know others who do) and join the queue which others don’t even consider joining, and hence get the jobs quickly and easily.

In an ideal world, such distinctions between ‘new careerists’ and other workers wouldn’t be as acute as is seen in India. Career management/counseling services can also help bridge such gaps by aligning strengths to jobs and enabling information access.

IIT to connect 2,000 engineering colleges through EDUSAT

2008 witnessed a new chapter in India's endeavors towards distance learning as Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) successfully launched the live telecast programs of its courses through ISRO's educational satellite, EDUSAT. Hundreds of students across the country attended the session by just sitting in their respective colleges.

IIT-B has already set up 50 Student Interactive Terminals (SIT) in the country. The premier technological institute is now planning to attract many more students to its programs by connecting the facility to over 2,000 engineering colleges across the country. Students of these colleges would be able to study the same course just as their counterparts in IIT Mumbai.

"The most important thing about this programme is that these courses are transmitted free of cost to the colleges with the help of free bandwidth provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation," Professor Kannan Moudgalya told reporters.

"We began this programme from January 2 with 12 courses, out of the 500 courses offered in IIT Mumbai through EDUSAT for undergraduates and postgraduates. We will be transmitting five additional courses through WEBCAST," he added.

Prof Moudgalya also clarified that the quality of teaching through EDUSAT is same as what IIT students study in the campus. But IIT will neither hold exams, nor do any evaluation or give grades for the students from remote locations, he added.

The main objective of this programme is to help engineering students in the remotest places to receive quality education at par with the IIT standard. They can get absolute benefit from the IITsyllabus and standard and also interact with IIT professors and students live and offline.

Batch'82 gifts Rs 4 crore to IIT Bangalore

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) has received a value Rs. 4 crore from the 1982 batch students as a special New Year gift. The alumni handed over a cheque of the same to the premier technological institute on Sunday.

The corpus will be utilized to bring in more talent into the faculty. Besides, with the interest earned on the corpus each year, 25 incoming faculty members at IIT-B will be offered a bonus of Rs 1 lakh for the next three years.

The batch had decided to raise Rs 6 crore in all, planned to mobilize the remaining Rs 2 crore and give it to IIT-B for its Legacy Project in 2008. Every year, the Legacy Project sees alumni celebrating its silver jubilee reunion by pledging to take up a project for the Institute.

This initiative was announced earlier this year at a New York alumni meet when director Ashok Misra and senior faculty members including Deepak Phatak, professor at IIT's Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, visited the US to drum-up enthusiasm among NRI ex-students for the ongoing IIT-B golden jubilee celebrations.

While disclosing the fact IIT-B Director said, "the institute has been coming up with various measures to retain and attract faculty. The idea behind offering Rs 3 lakh to faculty members is to make their life a little more comfortable when they join the institute, said a member of the alumni. This money can be utilised to buy some furniture or a car. The money is given to make them feel comfortable till they settle down and then start getting consultancy projects,'' added Misra.

11 from IIT- Delhi hostel score 99 percentile in CAT

IIT-Delhi's Jwalamukhi hostel erupted in joy on Tuesday after 11 of its residents belled the tough CAT exam securing 99 percentile and above this year. All 11 cracked the entrance test to IIMs in their first attempt.

"Five of us stay in the same wing of the hostel," said Arun Kapoor, final year electrical engineering student, who secured 99.25 percentile and got offers from IIM Kolkata and Bangalore. "Our friends, who had not appeared for CAT, came and sat with us to let the joy sink in. We did not scream in joy as we expected to crack the test," he said with a cool, confident air.

The top CAT scorer in the hostel was Amit Mittal with a 99.99 percentile, but he was not seen during the celebrations.

Sachin Dikshit, who secured 99.82 percentile, believes his power to analyze his weaknesses was his winning mantra. "I took various mock tests before CAT, and in each of them, I analyzed my mistakes and improved on my weaknesses," he said.

source: timesofindia

CAT results: Over 3,500 students make the cut

More than 3,500 students, who have had a crack at the Common Admission Test, can expect a call from at least one of the seven Indian Institutes of Management.

The results of CAT, which would be used by the IIMs and 124 other management institutes to enrol students, were released on Tuesday. Over two lakh B-school aspirants appeared for the examination for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other B-Schools across the country. "The scores can be accessed by keying in the test registration number and either the date of birth or the CAT application number," states the information given on the IIM's website. For accessing the results via SMS, one should send a message to 57333. The text should be as follows: CAT - a space, the registration number, one more space and the date of birth. The CAT, considered as one of the world's most demanding entrance examination for any graduate institute, was conducted on November 18th, 2007 to short list only about 5,000 candidates for admission to the IIMs. The short-listed candidates would be called for group discussions and personal interviews within a few days after the publication of the result. They would be individually communicated by post for the venue and date of interviews. The CAT score forms basis for about 110 B-Schools in the country for short-listing students for various management programs

But senior IIM faculty members themselves could not throw any light on the exact number of successful CAT aspirants. Confusion reigned as the website - supposed to tell 2.3 lakh candidates the CAT results - crashed, unable to take the load of queries from every corner of the country.

Thousands of students could not view their percentile scores as they logged on at the stroke of 3 pm. ''The entire exercise was an anti-climax. Even if some students got to know their percentile scores, they had no way of knowing which IIM would be giving them a call as the website had crashed by then,'' management institute TIME-Bangalore director Ajay Arora said.

The CAT admission committee decided to have a dedicated website this year after all the individual IIMs' websites crashed on result day last year. ''But this, too, does not seem to have helped. We will upload the results on individual IIM websites if the problem persists on Wednesday morning,'' a senior IIM official said. Though no trend was clearly discernible in all the confusion, faculty members said results varied widely across the three sections: English, Data Interpretation and Quantitative Analysis. And, for most, English was apparently the toughest section to crack, teachers said.

So, if a student has not scored well in English despite faring well in the other two sections, s/he may still not get a call from any of the IIMs. This is because IIMs - unlike other B-schools - insist on a minimum level of competence in all the three sections.

''The sectional cut-off for English seems to be on the higher side at 25 this year. Quantitative analysis, which was tougher, saw a drop in the cut-off (from 40 to 30) this year. The Data Interpretation section, too, as always, was easy,'' Arindam Lahiri of Career Launcher, a Delhi CAT coaching centre, said.

Faculty members also said there was a wide variability in performance across the three sections. And all these factors may prompt IIMs to relax cut-offs this year.

But some things have remained the same. About 90% of the successful candidates across most IIMs may again be engineering students, say senior faculty members.