The Hindu Business Line : The great churn post-placement

GROUND TRUTH: B-school students come into their jobs wanting to conquer the world, but are not ready to face harsh realities and office politics. And young managers move out looking for better work content, work culture, learning opportunities and sometimes just to get some work to do.

In my last article I wrote about what goes on behind the scenes during business school placements. In the subsequent days, several of the top-rung business schools completed their placement activities and a lot of newspaper space has been devoted to the companies, the salaries, the foreign postings, and the entrepreneurs who have defied the lure of moolah to pursue their dreams. Each business school will now claim how they have broken new records and pushed the average salary of the graduating batch even higher.

Story after media story ad nauseam is dedicated to talking about how so and so student in so and so business school secured so many hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds or euros. Certain students even go onto become celebrities for a while. (I cannot remember the last time a story about the talent crunch facing the IIMs when it came to acquiring quality faculty was reported in the media).

The great placement carnival will rapidly wind to a close in the weeks to come and everything will be forgotten for a year. So the public may be forgiven for thinking that once again batches of ambitious managers have entered companies in India and abroad and will now live happily ever after. Of course, a majority of students are genuinely pleased with their jobs and go on to succeed in their assignments. The ever-increasing flux of domestic and international recruiters to our IIMs is testimony to that trend. Each IIM, especially the ones in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta, boast of alumni lists that read like the who's who of business. But an untold story is the one about the sizeable attrition in each batch of graduating managers. The bulk of this churn happens in the first year itself.

Pressure to get placed

There are two main reasons for this. One is the overwhelming pressure to get placed as soon as possible on campus. At several top business schools, placement is a high-pressure event when sometimes over 80 companies swoop down on campus in the space of just one week. If, god forbid, you were to be recruited only in the latter part of the season, you may have interviewed with over twenty-five companies in the space of three or four days. By the end of the day, most students are aching to sign off on the first job offer they can get.

Companies too are under pressure to make offers and beat back competition from other competing recruiters. To partially counter this pressure, IIM Ahmedabad has adopted a policy of keeping the placement process "media free" till complete. To understand why, imagine the plight of a student and his family if he has to interview with a company on say Day Two, while the press is waxing eloquent about his best friend who has the $185,000 investment banking offer in New York.

Fresh with ideas

The second reason is that graduates approach their new jobs with tremendous alacrity. They are fresh with ideas and energy and look forward to a great amount of challenge and fulfilment from their jobs. Several companies channel this energy and provide a pleasing environment for these students. In the "What they don't teach at B-school" columns that are de rigueur nowadays, CEOs and MDs often say that business school students come into their jobs wanting to conquer the world but are not ready to face harsh realities and office politics. This is clichéd but true. Very few students, and surprisingly few companies, are able to handle this. So, it is actually no surprise when, in the months following recruitment, the market is soon flooded with `next to raw' resumes. Some students shift into profiles that were not available on campus. Others shift into companies that do not recruit from campuses, but offer lucrative MBA openings. The lion's share comprises students who, having joined campus employers, find that the job does not meet up to their expectations.

Young managers move out looking for better work content, work culture, learning opportunities and sometimes just to get some work to do. Whatever maybe the reason, the grapevine indicates that up to one-fourth of a batch is back in the market within a year. Some say even more. No wonder one of the first things new managers do is sign up to one of the many e-mail groups dedicated to recruitment. And it is surprising how often people shift to jobs that actually pay lower and to smaller brand names just so they can get the profile and work content they desire. Salary is all not what it is made out to be by the media; neither is a multinational brand name or a foreign posting. This year too, several from IIM-A and the other schools have decided to pursue the rocky path. They are all young people with immense passion, self-confidence and courage.

This is a very healthy trend and a phenomenon the nation must have great expectations from. But, when the media glare fades away, the struggle for these IIM-entrepreneurs is as difficult as for any new businessman. Even they battle for funding and for a credible business plan. The rare few return to the salaried ranks after failed attempts. Of course, all these stories fade in comparison to numbers like one-fifth of a million dollars per annum and average salaries of nine lakhs plus. The public will do well to remember that all this is the merely the first chapter in a much more turbulent story.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work on a book and a full-time writing career.)

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