Two by Two

Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job.

Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees.

For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accused of bias, arrogance and powerplay by other students.

Yet, the fact also remains that those on the placement committees sacrifice a significant part of their education and grades in order to run a great job-matching process for their entire batch.

Should they, though?

In the US, for instance, most leading B-schools have their professional teams that run the entire campus hiring process instead of students. Finding quality jobs for hundreds of students each year is a full-time job.

In India, too, many colleges are gradually coming around to the same POV.

IIM Kozhikode has transitioned the process from students to faculty. This model aims to instil transparency and professionalism in what vice-chancellor V Ramgopal Rao calls “a crucial rite of passage marking the end of academic life.”

BITS Pilani has adopted a system where HR professionals employed by the institute handle placements.

IIT Bombay set up a committee under a senior computer science faculty professor Uday Khedkar, with one of its aims being “setting up a clean and transparent placement process system”. Sources at IIT-B said the panel was set up after students brought to light instances of the biases some faced and how this had hampered their careers.

Our guest for the episode is Professor Varun Nagaraj, Dean and Professor of Information Management & Analytics at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. He also holds an MBA from Boston University, an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay. His career spanning over three decades in digital products reflects his passion for product management, development, and innovation.

Over the course of the discussion, the professor and hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how placements have evolved since their MBA days, their misgivings about the current system, and what institutes have to get better at.

Perhaps the larger question is, how should we think about matching employers and graduates? Is a compressed “placements” process the best way?

Welcome to episode 25 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schools

Why are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explains

Shiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post

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This is a shorter '10-minute trailer' cut from the hour-long discussion hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar had with the guests. If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.

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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

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