The Hindu Business Line : Such a big world, so many choices

Asked who he wanted to be in his next life, a colleague unhesitatingly replied: Balamuralikrishna, the pre-eminent, multi-faceted Carnatic musician. Only later, when someone pointed out that Balamuralikrishna wasn't born Balamuralikrishna, did he begin to wonder whether it was really such a good idea after all.

This is important; the fact that New Managers, like the old ones are/were made, not born.

But here the similarity ends. During a recent survey at IIT Kharagpur, it turned out that of the thousand students who graduate every year, only about a 150 even embark, initially, on a career in the discipline in which they were trained.

This is true not only of B. Techs in Agriculture or Civil Engineering, but also for blue-sky, cutting-edge technologies like information technology, telecommunications, and bio-technology. With the possible difference that the former group of students saw themselves from day one as being in a transit camp, while the latter, at least initially, thought that they had found their roost.

However, the approximately eight per cent who go abroad for higher education immediately after graduation are more likely to specialise in one of the often-inter-disciplinary sub-disciplines of the broad disciplinary area in which they have been trained.

Of those who stay on in India, at least till they are in the late '20s, 60 to 70 per cent wind up, sooner or later, at one of the reputed Institutes of Management, no matter what particular B.Tech. they graduated with.

`Sooner or later' because, like many of those admitted to IITs, relatively few get into reputed management schools at their first attempt. In the interim period, their first preference is to join one of the info-tech companies. Easy money is one reason, the need to build up a `war chest' is another. Unlike IITs, IIMs cost money.

In most cases, only if a job in the info-tech sector is not an available option, do B. Techs take up a job in the discipline for which they have been trained.

After which, both the former and the latter, keep taking the CAT until they succeed, or, sometimes, even afterwards; if they are bent on getting into a school of their choice.

If what is true of Kharagpur is true of the other IITs/NITs as well, this means that most New Managers-in-the-making, in the IIM phase of their careers, get there by different routes. Later, after they have sprouted wings, they will fly off in many different directions.

Of those who join reputed info-tech companies, only those from bottom-of-the-barrel institutes find their jobs rewarding enough, or challenging enough, to stay on. Which could be one reason for high rates of attrition among the more capable entrants in the IT sector. The other being that, generally speaking, in the case of New Managers, your success at work depends not so much on how good you are at it, but on what outside options are demonstrably available to you. HRD managers of IT companies sometimes, perhaps inadvertently, give the impression of believing, at least about the lower echelons, that only dead fish always swim with the current. Besides, as trekking fanatics well know, it is easier to get to the top if you zig-zag your way up.

When asked what they wanted to be, ambitious probationers who joined the State Bank of India in 1974, generally said Chairman, SBI. The shy or not-so-ambitious kept quiet. The one exception, was a lad who said he wanted to be the Governor of the Reserve Bank!. In those distant times, this seemed very eccentric. But no longer. Not any more.

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