Tuesday, August 7, 2007

How do you ensure industry involvement in SMOT?

Industry involvement in academia in India is almost nil. Industry has neither any knowledge of academic nor has any plans to even get to know what is happening out there except making a constant demand that the students coming out must be readily employable. What is the contribution they make to make the students employable is anybody’s guess. Academic institutions are competing among themselves now. This should change. Industry must compete to grab the attention of educational institutions.
Industry Institutional interaction must happen at different levels. A. At faculty level, B. at student level. Enough has been said on these.
At SMOT, we have allocated 25% of the courses to be handled by professionals from industry and we pay them sumptuously. Get them to teach, everything else will fall in place – projects, placements, curriculum update, professional approach and so on.

Employability - Fundamental to a professional program...

Employability and selection of students are two different activity. Employability is an essential requirement of a professional course. If the employability factor is not built in to the curriculum, then it is incomplete. There are courses which are for the sake of knowledge, for the sake of building other competencies, but not a professional course like MBA. An institute can have selection criteria to any level, but if the students are not prepared for the professional life, then it is incomplete. SMOT gives utmost importance to employability of its graduates by bringing in focus on what kind of job roll will fit a particular student and what kind of learning to be imparted to the student to achieve that objective. This is fundamental. In the absence of this, there is no point telling the world that we are creating leaders of future when the students do not even know which job they are best at.

MBA Re-Engineered......

Keeping superstructure as it is, just tweak the sub-structure to bring in the much needed focus of role specificity in to the curriculum is what I term as re-engineered MBA. To my surprise, this seems to be quiet an involved exercise and delivering this curriculum to the desired quality will always be a challenge.What is being offered to day stops with functional area specialization. This means, students specializing in marketing, for example, need not necessarily be a good brand manager or a business analyst. For one to become a good brand manager or a business analyst is left to the person to gain experience and has become the responsibility of the company where he or she joins to mould. Close to 80% of the specific knowledge and skills required for a particular role / career track, is gained after MBA with very little input forthcoming as part of the curriculum. Going by the trend, even this seems to be far-fetched expectation, as most of the students passing out of the business schools do not even know what kind of career they look for and where they will best suit at. SMOT curriculum will achieve this very fundamental requirement. Students therefore will know what they are best at and therefore which career / role they will be most suitable for.

Monday, July 23, 2007

How effectively management graduates fit into the roles in industry after they graduate and join an organization...

An excerpt from the Vault Guide to Management Careers

Looking to learn Management administration and development from the ground up? If you're just coming out of college, many large companies such as General Electric have general management rotations where you'll get a chance to work in many business functions. But big companies aren't always the answer. If it's your first management role, you may have better luck getting in the door at a small organization where you can take on a greater amount of responsibility quickly.

If you are interested in manufacturing, your best bet is to hone your skills at a manufacturing company such as Toyota or 3M. While each of these companies manufactures different types of products, they all have a high number of employees.

Management roles pique your interest? Look to industries that have some of the largest companies in the globe., such as consumer products and financial services. Companies such as Wal-Mart and Bank of America have large, fully staffed organization development functions with internal consultants who address the development issues of different business areas. For every Management and business function, there's a way to learn more about companies known for success in those areas.

Starting any career is tough -- you don't want to start in one job, find out you don't like it and then start over with another. But as a management professional, your experience in the field, regardless of its type, will always be valuable. A good way to start an management career is to determine what side of management you want to work on: People Management or Developmental role.

It has become common practice among U.S. business schools to require potential students to have substantial work experience before admission to MBA programs. Yet, the benefits of this selection criterion have not been fully articulated nor empirically examined. This article explores the relationships between years of pre-MBA work experience and post-MBA career outcomes. Specifically, we examine the effects of prior work experience on cash compensation, career satisfaction, number of promotions, and individuals' propensity to stay with their first post-MBA employer. Results indicate that previous work experience is not significantly related to graduates'' tenure in their first post-MBA position. Furthermore, counter to conventional wisdom, MBAs without prior work experience were more satisfied, had received more promotions, and earned more cash compensation than some of their more experienced counterparts. The implications of these findings for those responsible for admissions in graduate professional schools and for corporate recruiters are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Looking for an MBA?

MBA education is one of the best ways of pursuing opportunity in today’s world. There are schools with impressive track records in providing opportunity to their graduates. But have you taken a good hard look at the quality of opportunities they bring ?

SMOT has put what comes after placement at the top of its agenda. What this means, is that keeping the end in view (high quality opportunities for graduates), everything from the curriculum to the garden sink has been re-engineered to optimize the graduate into a formidable management professional.

To become a management professional of substance and value, a candidate needs to be equipped with knowledge that is relevant, skills to use that knowledge effectively, extensive knowledge of the concerned domain and a set of values that leads to a belief in the graduate’s worth to the organization and its clients. SMOT has put in place a comprehensive program that seeks to develop and refine every single component here.

SMOT strives to provide inputs with lifelong usefulness and is strongly focused on exponentially increasing your value to organizations.