E COMMERCE, START-UPS TOP B-SCHOOL CAMPUS PLACEMENTS

Recruiters heading for campus placements will find the batch of 2015 free of the usual jitters. Placement cells of more than 11 top B-schools point out this may be the best placement season in the past few years.

Factors such as bigger pay packets, more job offers and companies waking up from a hiring freeze have resulted in students displaying a larger risk appetite and testing the market for recruitment despite pre-placement offers (PPOs) in hand.

Placement cells of IIM Indore, XLRI, MDI Gurgaon, NMIMS,IIM Calcutta and IIM Lucknow have found students in larger-than-expected groups, wanting to join the e-commerce and startup industry. “E-commerce is the most buzzing sector on campus,” says Prabudh Jain, student placement coordinator, MDI, Gurgaon. Agrees Suvarna Athavale, external relations secretary, IIM Calcutta, “E-commerce is growing rapidly in India, and many students are interested especially because of its unique challenges. Students are also expecting to bag more offers than before.”

Banking and consulting, the traditional favourities, are still popular on campus, especially when it comes to strategy consulting roles from the likes of McKinsey & Co, BCG, Bain & Co and the like.

An earlier indication of the popularity of e commerce was revealed during the ‘ET Top Recruiters in B-School’ survey when, for the first time, e-commerce recruiters such as Flipkart and Amazon joined the top 10 rankings, alongside traditional recruiters such as Cognizant, ICICI BankBSE -0.02 % and Deloitte, which have consistently been making it to the top 10 over the past few years.

At Mumbai-based NMIMS, the placement team is trying to double the number of start-ups they got last year to placate one-fourth of the batch who want to join these new-age firms. NMIMS has 450 students to place and had five start-ups hiring from their campus, last year.

“The students are rooting for smaller companies that are below the radar like Salt n Soap, and not just larger ones like Flipkart and Amazon,” says the chairperson, placements of one of the top B-schools who does not wish to be named. Students believe opportunities to learn may be more in smaller firms. Besides, the large number of deals in the startup phase has boosted their confidence, adds the chairperson.

Arpit M (name changed), an IIM Bangalore final year student has a PPO like many in his batch. However, most of his classmates, despite their PPOs, will sit for interviews again during final placements. “In any other year, a PPO would have sealed our decision, but those trying their luck this time despite PPOs could be higher,” he says.

Student placement committee member, Mahima Sushil of IMI Delhi, says, “It’s still early days but we are expecting a good number of first-time recruiters as well.” Deferred placements may also increase because more students want to start their own ventures, in an economy that whets the risktaking appetite. Around 20 graduates from the Class of 2014 across the six older IIMs alone had opted out of cushy corporate jobs to launch their own ventures.

Rajiv Mishra, chairperson, placements at XLRI has already seen a couple of students discussing deferred placements. XLRI has 180 students to place. Usually, a few students opt for deferred placements, but this year could see more doing so. B-schools offer deferred placements to top students who want to start their own businesses but in case of a failed attempt, get help from their alma mater for another shot at recruitment.

Indications are that companies may shell out more for their choice of candidates. A placement cell member at one of the newer IIMs, IIM Rohtak, says that freshers are expecting anywhere between Rs 12 lakh and Rs 16 lakh per annum. “This, despite the fact that average work experience for this batch is about 14 months as compared to three years last time. For the batch of 2014, the average salary was at Rs 9.72 lakh,” he says. “The season has begun with a bang,” says Jain from MDI Gurgaon. “It’s still early days, but as compared to last year when the average salary was at Rs 14.74 lakh, we are expecting around or above Rs 16 lakh.”

Although students are treading with caution, some positivity from the summers has rubbed off on the students of IIM Bangalore. “During summer placements, firms made more offers and if that happens again during finals, it will change the game,” says Sapna Agarwal, head, Career Development Services of IIM Bangalore. Summer placements ended in record time for most B-schools, and many companies across campuses had to be declined.

At XIM, Bhubaneswar, feelers have been sent from IT firms and FMCG companies that had not hired in the past four years, for IT system profile and roles in marketing.

At IIM Lucknow, PE firms and investment banks are returning with more profiles, says Pushpendra Priyadarshi, chairperson, placement. “The batch of 2015 has also shown signs of being selective about their roles and plans to wait for the right offer than accept the first one,” says a student placement cell member of IIM Indore.

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5 Trends Driving HR Technology In 2014

  

Let’s take a look at the top five:

1) The world is your oyster (and your talent pool).  Real talent knows no geographic borders — no country has a monopoly on the most sought after, up-to-the-second skills that are needed in IT, social media, software programming, science and math. You want the best, no matter where he or she lives. The trick is to find them. This means taking your search global by increasing your presence on networks that have worldwide reach. Aggressively seek out talent sites and forums around the globe. Hire outside help if needed to accomplish this.

2) Technology-technology-technology. The number and kinds of data-mining, talent search and hiring technologies that are out there can be daunting. But they are crucial, exciting tools that every organization should make themselves aware of. Whether it’s video interviewing or a pinpoint search for a highly-specific skill set, technology can make HR easier, faster and more effective. Don’t get overwhelmed by your options. Use the technology that works for you. Be wary of too many bells and whistles, and overly-aggressive salespeople. Focus on what you want to accomplish and ignore the rest.

3) Real time talent analytics and big data management. In the bad old days, employees got annual or maybe six-month assessments. Which translated into a lot of squandered time and opportunity to learn, grow and improve (or terminate if need be). Today technology enables a continuous real-time assessment of performance. Employees can be made aware of their shortcomings and get work on improving them, and people who are doing great work can get the kind of support and encouragement that will inspire and allow them to soar to new heights.

4) Mobile hone. The world’s gone mobile and it’s pretty awesome. Now your talent lives and breathes in real time portable connectivity. To reach this talent, you've got to go where they are. Mobileize your search-and-employ efforts. Make applying for a job possible while people are riding the subway, eating lunch, or listening to music (or even doing all three at once).

5) Sweeten the deal. Organizations are cutting back on employee benefits, especially healthcare. To make up for this unfortunate fact, it’s imperative to make employment attractive through secondary benefits such as childcare, flex time, gyms and exercise classes, healthy food offerings, gamification prizes and extras like free-lunch Fridays. You want your people to feel cared for and cared about, morale stays high, and a healthy workforce performs at a much higher level.

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Employee Engagement

In today's cut throat competition scenario, employee turnover is a very delicate issue. Attrition rates are increasing. Most employees tend to leave a company due to disengagement. Disengagement at work is considered a costly and  highly frustrating problem. Treating employees as human and not experimental robots makes reducing the problem a little simpler. In order to counter this issue engagement has become a major buzzword across all corporates. According to a survey recently taken by Deloitte, Seventy-eight percent of leaders say it is both an urgent and important priority. Employee engagement is a measure of an employee’s positive attitude towards his/her work and commitment to remain attached to the organisation for a long period of time. 

Engaged employees care about the future of a company and act as their brand ambassadors as well as endorse the brand as an Employer of choice. All core business measures – profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, quality, retention and sales are significantly higher at companies with a concentration of engaged employees.  

Practitioners and academicians have argued that an engaged workforce create a competitive advantage to any company. In short, it can be said that Engagement is the new currency of the current economy.

It is said that if a company wants to improve their engagement, they must not think of complicated strategies but instead make an effort to create a dialogue with and among their employees. According to Michael Papay and Alexandre Santille the following four strategies turn real time feedback into real time employee engagement:

1.     Focus On What Matters Most

Organisational alignment occurs when top level management focuses their employee’s energy on the most important issues on hand. Solutions for issues come from the most unexpected source at times!

2.     Use Open Ended Questions

      Excessive surveying of employees leads to dehumanizing and increases   further drag on the intentions of improving employee engagement. So once a basic survey has been carried out for the employees it would more feasible to send out open ended questions instead of testing a pre-existing set of solution.  It is better to make the experience of a survey more conversational so that there is a two way communication.

3.     Offer Anonymity and Transparency

Employees should be free to express what they think. It is important for the employer to create an environment for the employees where they feel secure and keep the information exchange flowing to all so that everyone adds on.

4.     Take Action

Before doing anything else it is imperative to put away the ego and pride, be polite and acknowledge people.

The key to employee engagement is to keep the employees involved and motivated. Employee engagement if utilized correctly could be a very powerful tool. It not only has the potential to significantly affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty but also is an essential link to customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder value. 
                      
                                                                                             - Sarthak Daing

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Learning and Development issues in Indian Context

Learning and development is the bedrock of talent management. It touches and is the key-driver behind, nearly all parts of the talent cycle and is actually a core enabler for delivering many of the talent processes. In the last two decades the Indian economy has witnessed tremendous change in terms of global competition and technological advancement. As a result of these changes a lot of organisations have had to undergo restructuring which has led to a significant transformation in the work practices. This has led to demand for new job skills, greater levels of workforce which has a big impact on learning and development provided to the employees.

 Organisation Transformation often results in anxiety, confusion, anger and withdrawal amongst employees. According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, less than 8% of hr leaders have confidence that their teams have the required skills to meet the challenge of global environment and consistently deliver innovative programs that drive business impact. 

In order for HR teams to become better business partners, they need to develop deeper business acumen, analytical skills, learn to operate in the capacity of performance advisors and most importantly understand the needs of the 21^st century workforce. This, one could say is the responsibility of the learning and development team to make sure the employees acquire these right tools over a period of time which could positively impact an organisation’s business results. Sadly though, despite of the challenges and need to overcome them, merely a few organisations are emphasizing on the need for training and development. The organisations which do don’t have effective modules. 

An issue with regards to the training and development modules are that most of them are one size fits all kind of training. The training imparted is based without judging the caliber of the individual in question or the job profile. Often trainers conduct programmes without considering the background of people involved and whether they understand the process in consideration. Also most trainers still continue with the old format of PowerPoint presentations without any add-ons in the form of videos, games or any other entertaining ways of getting the message across. 

Shifting focus to those being trained, it has been seen that the participants of a training programme consider the training to be a time to relax from their busy schedule and have fun. Often it has been seen that these participants don’t take the trainings seriously. It would be safe to say that that in order for the process of learning and development to be complete and show results in the financials, trainers must understand the end customers and the main reason behind why the training is being conducted while the participants need to buckle up and show some seriousness and genuine interest towards these programs .

                                                                                                                               - Sarthak Daing

                                                         (Batch 2014-16)

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