The Hindu Business Line : IIM-A grads too need career counselling

Over 1.5 lakh applications for just 250 seats! So, securing admission into IIM-A would ideally mean the end of career blues for a candidate. But the institute thinks otherwise and plans to start regular career counselling sessions for its students from the next academic year.

Paradoxical as it might sound, a large number of IIM-A graduates make wrong career choices and bring a bad name to the premier institute, apart from landing themselves in trouble. The institute gets a lot of flak from recruiters when some students accept job offers during placement and then do not join their company.

"We are planning to have career counselling, which basically means profiling the students, so that they make the right career choice," says IIM-A Placement Coordinator, Prof Piyush Kumar Sinha.

Stung by a large number of students doing the disappearing act in recent years, IIM-A has started talking to its students on a regular basis. "We want our students to understand that not having an appointment letter from a top-dollar paying investment bank does not mean the end of the world. The job profile has to match with their profile so that they have a healthy mix of money and job satisfaction," says Prof Sinha.

The faculty is interacting more with the students through the institute's clubs and several alumni interactions are being organised so that the students can get lessons from the real world, he says. The efforts are already yielding results. "There has been a sharp drop in the number of students not joining thecompanies. I have personally followed each case and tried to find a solution," he says.

Although the institute does not share numbers, Prof Sinha says the rate has dropped nearly 70 per cent for the last batch; only a couple of students did the disappearing act. IIM-A hopes the record will be maintained by the recently placed batch.

"For us, even two students not joining is not acceptable. We hope our efforts will help us in preventing such embarrassment in the coming years," says Prof Sinha.

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