The Hindu Business Line : In a manager's footsteps

It sure is a proud moment when you graduate from a BE or an MBA programme and land yourself a good job in a good company. And yet, when you first enter the company, you find yourself dealing with issues that you never came across while you were up all night poring over your textbooks. And this orientation period seems to last forever. With graduate unemployment on the rise, the important question in today's recruitment scenario seems to be — are students `work ready' once they leave college?

Companies don't seem to think so. J. N. Amrolia, Executive Director-HR, Ashok Leyland, said at a recent press conference that industry has been concerned about the quality of the students passing out of engineering and management colleges for a long time, and has been talking to colleges and devising programmes by which students can get exposure to various industries prior to their passing out.

Which is what the `student manager-shadowing programme' by Trans-Action Partners, an international not-for-profit training, consultancy and educational organisation, is all about. Devised by Maureen Guirdham, Partner, Trans-Action Partners, the programme gets select students from management or engineering colleges to accompany an executive or a manager as he or she works. Guirdham said that this helps in two ways — it helps students see what issues are dealt with, how they are dealt with and gives them the opportunity to ask for explanations. It also provides opportunities for the students to see the criteria and standards followed by companies and helps them prepare for their careers.

This programme, which is just being introduced in India, has been implemented in six other countries — Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Poland and Russia. Guirdham, who ran the programme in the first four of these countries and devised the model for the latter two, said: "It has been an extremely successful programme since 1993, when we first introduced it in the Czech Republic.

In that country, there have been about a hundred internships since its inception, and three hundred applications, and we have received a lot of positive feedback." Some of the feedback came from companies like Hilton, which said that the programme is very useful, and Citibank, which said that the students selected were very suitable for the programme. Which brings us to the next point — how are the students selected?

"The selection process in itself is a great learning experience because the selection criteria reflects company requirements, and therefore prepares students for the actual job application process," said Guirdham.

Students are selected across institutions depending on factors such as academic performance, career commitment, and evidence of self-improvement. It also takes into account the candidate's leadership potential and attitude towards teamwork. "There must be evidence that he is a team worker," she explained, adding, "Which could be from anything like his or her participation in theatricals, or being part of the cricket team." The aim is to shift perspective, and look for candidates who are not just brilliant students, but also well-rounded individuals. And unlike an internship, the manager-shadowing programme is offered as a prize and not just a routine part of the curriculum. Students will compete to be part of the programme, so in the end it is the cream of the crop that gets to participate. And it is unpaid.

So the next question would be, isn't an internship just as good? The difference is that here you get to interact with the top level of the management hierarchy, and you get to see how things work at a level where all the decisions are made unlike an internship, where you could be working at the lower levels.

As far as the companies are concerned, Guirdham believes that a company engaged in this programme will earn a positive image. It will also serve as a development exercise for managers and will expand the pool of employable graduates. "It helps the companies fulfil their social responsibility," she said, "And plus, it's low cost!"

For the universities, it increases the employability of their graduates and focuses students in a relevant frame of studies. It would help them understand the curriculum better since the students would have seen it being put into practice. A. Eugin P. Fernando, Coordinator (Tamil Nadu), Trans-Action Partners, said the organisation is in talks with companies such as ICICI Bank. The number of students that can be accommodated in the programme will depend on the companies' requirements, he said. "We can have a hundred students if they ask for it," he added. He said while the programme is beginning in Chennai alone, the organisation plans to expand operations to include Hyderabad and New Delhi, and eventually Mumbai as well. "We will expand to those cities next year maybe." As of now, the organisation will focus on implementing the project in Chennai by around June this year.

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