The Hindu Business Line : Are MBAs delivering?

The last two years of economic meltdown have had a sobering effect on the MBAs and have resulted in the toning down of their "unreasonable expectations" in terms of salary and perks.

These guys want a salary of Rs10 lakh per annum. Most companies can't, or won't, pay that much for middle management," fumed the HR manager of a software firm last year. He was referring to the demands of freshly passed out MBAs whom he had met at a couple of campus interviews. In the course of the conversation, he made the point that MBAs were under pressure to deliver, for the first time, because of the economic slowdown. Rather cuttingly, he said he found quite a few of the graduates whom he had earlier recruited, wilting under pressure.

Was this the experience of other recruiters and companies? Did the MBAs recruited by them deliver? Were they worth the cost to the company? Where did they fall short? Did their course prepare them for reality? Were their expectations (on salary and career growth) too unrealistic? Was there relative stability of tenure?

Canvas spoke to a number of HR heads and experts to get their take on this issue.

K. Pandia Rajan, Managing Director, Ma Foi Consultants, a leading recruitment firm, says that few companies ask themselves the question whether the MBAs are delivering what they were recruited for. Very often the recruitment of highly talented manpower from premier institutes is a goal in itself for the image boost it gives to an organisation. "To be known as a Day one company in an institute has some esteem or value attached to it," he says.

On what MBAs bring to the table, Sukumaran, Head of Human Resources at the Chennai based Murugappa Group says, "They bring in tremendous energy and value add in terms of new thoughts and new dimensions to address our problems." He selects around 20 MBAs per year, mainly from IIMs and feels that they have delivered more than what was expected from them. "We have been recruiting more seriously over the past five years to form a critical mass which will accelerate the pace of change in the group."

K. Ramkumar, General manager, HR, ICICI Bank, which is a big recruiter at campuses ( around 75 from IIMs and another 100 from the next tier such as SP Jain, NMIMS, Symbiosis, Bajaj, and the like are selected every year), says that the talent of MBA graduates needs to be translated into capability. "Many of these candidates have an untested view about themselves. Good grades don't necessarily equal good business results," he says.

But he seems satisfied with the results that most recruits are delivering. He says the payoff for his organisation comes thanks to a special relationship it has with the B-Schools, not only by virtue of being a large recruiter but also because it invests in these schools by contributing to the curriculum.

Senior managers of ICICI Bank take regular classes at B-schools and this provides an opportunity for interface with the institutes as well as help supplement the theoretical inputs with practical cases.

But, is there something he would like these graduates to come equipped with, which is not happening now? His response: "The curriculum needs to keep pace with the changes taking place. There is no campus that teaches selling skills. I would like the institutes to defocus on "strategy" and focus a bit more on building skills, especially behavioural skills."

He feels that though the B-school "may be teaching presentation skills, they do not teach influencing skills. The most logical idea may not necessarily win the day in a business meeting. Building inter personal skills, learning to rope in alliances, learning what to say and what not to say, being aware of organisational dynamics — these are things that one would like the graduates to bring in from the campus." Ramunajam Sridhar, visiting faculty at a couple of IIMs and CEO, Brand-Comm, a brand consulting, advertising and PR firm, also makes this point when he says "We find that the ability to communicate is still wanting in several MBA graduates. Their writing and oral communication skills should be better than they are currently are"

He attributes this mainly to the fact that 70-80 per cent of the students are engineers who are probably better at quantitative methods. Also, the fact that the system is loaded in favour of analysis and not necessarily communication skills.

To the question whether MBAs have had a reality check during the past two years of the economic slowdown, Pandia Rajan, who takes in about 15 MBA graduates every year, says that the recent entrants have come in with a lot more realism than earlier graduates. A couple of years ago, it was quite common for MBAs to insist on a meteoric career progression. "They wanted the corner office within five years!" he says. Now, they are willing to put their heads down and work, and retention levels are better too, he adds.Sridhar adds that organising industry interactions and also choosing people with work experience for the MBA programmes help graduates get a better perspective. He points out that the cost of management programmes tend to make them tense and anxious and affects their attitude to some extent. "They keep trying to change their jobs because of peer pressure. We have found in our experience that more and more MBA students need counselling and emotional help to get their priorities in place."

And the final word from him - "All said and done, no situation is ideal. But at the end of the day, one thing is clear. Indian industry needs MBAs and MBAs need Indian industry."

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