The Hindu Business Line : `Corporate interaction helps'

Management schools prepare us perfectly in theoretical knowledge, but freshers venturing into the corporate world are completely at sea during the first few months of their careers. What would be ideal is for the B-schools to prepare them by providing enough interaction with the corporate world and for the corporates themselves to hold at least one month-long initiation programmes that prepare the new recruit with the realities of corporate life."

Pune's Sushant Sinha, Assistant Manager with HDFC Bank, is vociferous about the need for industry-B school networking and co-operation so that it is a win-win situation for both the recruits and the corporates so that they get exactly what they want from the B-schools. And his wish is already coming true for the newer lot of recruits, who are now trained by employer HDFC Bank, which puts them through all channels of business for all-round development.

"Back in management school, we are told all about Kotler and there is so much emphasis on ethics and principles in business but the moment you step into the corporate world you realise that the ground realities are very different and 80 per cent of the time, ethics have no place in what we do, " he says

The 28-year-old did his post-graduation in marketing and HR from Indira School of Management Studies in Pune.He was simultaneously working with a newspaper's marketing department and was picked up Videocon International during a campus interview in 2002. "I joined as an executive but rose up fairly fast, becoming a manager handling home appliances and reporting first to the Vice-President and then to the President, P.N. Dhoot," says Sinha. He joined ICICI Prudential in 2004.

"Most of what I learnt, I apply at work. In the first flurry of action we forget what we learnt from Kotler; but I find it helps me immensely when I go back to Kotler or revise my books. Ideas keep business booming, and going back to my books always brings ideas brimming back to my mind," Sinha signs off.