The Hindu Business Line : ISB Dean sees new trends in recruitment

Large recruiters may be going for smaller numbers in campus recruitment but there are more recruiters now, says Mr Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, Indian School of Business.

The economic slowdown may have sobered the enthusiasm of IT and financial services' companies in campus recruitments but the field has diversified with more companies from a wider range of sectors willing to recruit.

Companies in the entire gamut of healthcare - including pharmaceuticals and hospitals - are now big recruiters. Technology companies "are not bad", while FMCG and manufacturing companies too are recruiting.

Companies realise that this is the right time to pick up quality talent - record-breaking salaries at recruitment are not the order of the day, according to Mr Rangnekar.

Traditionally, business schools had concentrated on a limited number of verticals - finance, marketing and human resource management.

ISB is now looking at new subjects to add to the basket of courses for the second campus coming up at Mohali, Punjab, where it expects to start from 2011, Mr Rangnekar said. Management courses in healthcare, large infrastructure, public policy formulation and manufacturing are some of the new curricula planned.

Mr Rangnekar was speaking to reporters on a visit to ISB to cover two separate events - the Global Social Venture Competition and the conference on emerging market finance - being organised by it over the weekend.

The economic slowdown has also debunked another theory - that monthly wages and big companies are a safe bet, Mr Rangnekar said. The students know they are getting into a tough market and that the conditions are deteriorating.

Over the last decade, over 2,500 students who have passed out of ISB have launched over 60 ventures of their own, he said. That is to be expected as it takes a few years for the students to learn the ropes and pay off a part of their education loans, he said.

He was optimistic that more students would be interested in floating their own ventures and to get into start ups to grow with the company. ISB was actively supporting its students launching their own ventures by supporting them to repay education loans. It is now looking at getting its alumni association to fund loan repayments of students planning to float their own ventures.

Social venture

The global social venture competition is a part of an international forum for students and entrepreneurs with investment plans that have a social objective and are financially viable. Two teams were selected from a shortlisted pack of 18 projects from India, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong competing to participate in the international competition. Globally, the winner will be selected from over 300 projects.

The two projects selected were Pioneer Healthcare by a team from ISB, which envisages creation of a network of rural hospitals supported by a main facility in an urban centre; and Ummeed, a project by students from the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, to set up a number of decentralised units to make affordable sanitary napkins for rural women.

The winner at the international competition would bag over $45,000 (Rs 22.5 lakh), apart from travel prizes and access to the investment community.

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