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Had a chance meeting on the street with the father of a nice girl I know, a senior of my daughter in her school, and I asked him how was his daughter. He told me proudly that she has passed out and joined Infosys from the campus placement. I didn’t miss the smirk on his face and that started a chain of thoughts. I knew she used to study in a good private engineering college in Kolkata, supposed to be best among the privates, and Infosys, Wipro, TCS, CTS etc. go there for campus placement, as mass recruiters. The salaries offered are most between 3-4.5 Lacs per annum (LPA). While they are good companies, they offer different levels of salaries to different profiles and in different Institutes, and these mass recruitment positions are generally the lowest of them. The parents are generally ecstatic about the names of the companies, but do the names justify the levels or rather the levels they didn’t get?
In a previous article, http://sudipbhattacharya.blogspot.com/2012/10/survive-from-your-relative-position.html , I had discussed why the life coordinates have to be looked in relative rather than absolute terms. Here I will bring out a case study to strengthen the point and show a clear example of how it affects the lives of the people, mostly throughout their lives.
Take the case of Jadavpur University (JU), the
premier-most state University in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. In the whole
eastern region, this is considered the top place in engineering education
except the IIT-Kharagpur, and is quite at par, if not better, than the NITs in
this region like Durgapur and Rourkella. West Bengal is a state which has
historically supplied highly intelligent students to the country and the world.
And JU always gets the top thousand students (except the 100 or so who goes to
the IITs and another 100 who choose the NITs instead). Beside the few non-core
non-circuit (or non-IT one can say) branches like Food Technology, Printing
technology, Pharmacy etc. branches which has a narrow and focussed industrial
market only, we will discuss the placement scenario trend of the rest (about
700 students) as per the data available for the last 5 years. While the point I
want to drive home can easily be extrapolated in terms of any particular class
or branch also, I will go for the total picture only which will suffice to
clearly show the divide of the haves and the have nots.
Some background : The placement scenario has changed
drastically since 2014, when a new TPO was brought from outside by a new VC,
breaking the long tradition and practice of JU. It was a desperate gamble for
him which clicked like a nut and bolt. Seeing the early results and effects,
the VC gave her complete freedom to operate, which angered all others soaked in
the JU bureaucratic culture, before the VC himself had to go out due to some
political reasons. But the history didn’t, it changed. The lady was in the
corporate for nearly 2 decades and could swim in their culture and language
like a fish, it was home for her. She was taken aback at first by the deep
culture of internal politics in the Institute, often deeply nasty and coupled
with very selfish and jealous mind-sets of the functionaries, but the tigress
that she was as I heard from many sources, she fought back at this challenge with
the highly professional capabilities and mind-set. She just ignored all the
shackles and obstacles thrown at her and dived into her work with an animal
instincts. Students who were completely alien to a TPO who thinks cares and
fights for them like this developed a high trust and love for her, though she
was stern with them on many issues, as they understood the caring and the
purpose. She became a darling of the students in no time, much to the
consternation of the authorities who have traditionally cared a fig for the
students, rather than their own power and political games. But JU is a place
where the students are the Kings, even the VCs don’t try to cross the paths
with them, so she was at least safe from any drastic action from the jealous
ones. And students were rewarded with sharply northward graphs of the placement
parameters every year, both in quantity and quality. Companies who lost their
patience before and decided not to come anymore, started coming back. New
companies started coming and taking more than they had come for, often with
better packages, after she was through in her negotiations. A new culture of
relations and trust with the corporates started, they have found a TPO who
really understood their need and culture. Media started running after her to highlight
the silver clouds, she became a mini-celebrity in a few years.
The culture of a Professor looking after the
placement department is a tradition in most academic institutes, particularly
the government ones, but the strong academic leanings and bent of mind provides
a serious and severe handicap in dealing with the corporates which have quite a
different need and aspirations than the academic ones. This is why it is said
that the academic Institutions and the industry have very little interactions
and commons in their ways and the chasm is so serious that only about 17% of
the engineering graduates coming out in India are employable, found in various
industry surveys and analysis. For the top IITs and IIMs it didn’t matter as
many professors over there have high levels of interactions and relations with
the industry, through short stints, consulting and industry-aided projects.
This is a mini-scale of the USA culture where the industry have very high
levels of give and takes with the academic Institutions and many top corporate
bosses and also many Professors often take short sabbaticals to teach or work
in the industry. For example, Prof. Sougata Ray, one of my Professors and a
later dean in IIM-Calcutta, had taken a sabbatical for a year in 2013/14 and
joined Infosys as their Strategic Advisor, at a total package of about 1.5 crores
LPA, about 7-8 times of his the then salary. Prof. Krishna Kumar (KK), a legend
and Guru of the gurus in the Strategic Management field in India (now Professor
Emeritus in IIM Lucknow), had worked closely with many companies in his
teaching career as consultant and religiously wrote case studies on the
experiences. Prof. Ranjan Das, another legend in this field and now Emeritus
Professor in IIM-Calcutta, had a career spanning more than 2 decades in the
industry before coming to teaching, though he did his fellowship in IIM
Ahmedabad in the same period with Professor KK.
Also, in IIMs and IITs, the push-sales is not at all required, the
alumni has a high pull strength and the companies don’t have much space to
dictate, rather they vie with others to get a few students with the stamp
itself. The tremendous grinding, as I have experienced in the IIM myself, also
change the mind-set and work ethic (and ambition and dedication for sure) of the
students, they had to already prove their mettle once for just getting into
those places. That provides him a different type of confidence to dictate terms
to the interviewing companies. Do they really need any TPO at all for except
the liaison and administration? The challenge for this job in the other
Institutes are far greater and needs different levels of approach altogether.
But in all other Institutes, the concept of applying an academic, who are mostly devoid of any corporate experience at all, to the placement function is a folly in itself. They often do not understand or appreciate that more than the academic knowledge or marks, it is the mindset and soft transferable skills and the creative aspects of a student is much more vital for corporate success or effectiveness. Before being an academic, nearly one and a half decade of corporate experience has taught me how industry operates and why. With more and more thrust on the application rather than raw knowledge in this google world where you don’t need to memorise anything, with the traditional industries like Steel and Oil are sagging and the virtual companies created on just a creative idea become some of the richest overnight, it is high time the academics try to understand what all thing truly matter. It is no more the world of Carnegie or Rothschild, it is the age of Gates and Zuckerberg and Bezos. Mukesh Ambani, of reliance Industries that was traditionally a Petroleum giant and has leapt successfully into Telecom and Retail, represents the bridge between the two worlds. The rich man of India after 40 years of the business history has transformed into one of the richest man of the world in the last 4 years only. Ambani empire may have the ruthless ambition earning him a lot of detractors and critics, but the way he pulled out an investment of 1.5 Lac crores out of the purse of some of the world’s best companies and investors for his companies, is no less than a coup in the world business.
Now, lets come to the issue of edge, the relative
strength of one student over another or all other competitor for a particular
position. As the rankings in the entrance examination is not very different
among the students here or for a particular branch, the basic intelligence
level is more or less assured. Usually companies try to take a written test
also, mostly with some fundamental questions on the subjects coupled with the
IQ sort of questions, basically to conform or force a basic level of
understanding and as an elimination procedure. But the real questions and the
most vital issues come after that. What criteria will be put in the interview
levels? Will they ask subject questions or try to test the attitudinal
parameters so vital for the business? For the high-paying companies, the
interview levels are graded into several rounds, to test the creative
abilities, the thinking capabilities and the characteristic traits, besides the
obvious, aspects of the soft skills including the communication ability, which
is one of the most crucial need for success in the corporate world in the 21st
century.
While traditionally we have relied on the marks to
try to understand the level of a student, with that mindset handicap, we can
try to analyse the kind of salaries the students get in the campus placement
nowadays (running average/ trend of the last 2 years) to understand the aspect
of relative edge of the groups of students over the other groups.
Out of the approx.. 700 students, disregarding the
non-IT non-circuit and non-core branches, generally have 90% and above placements,
many of them also acquiring multiple offers, though there are rules restricting
the number of offers they can take. The salary range and the approximate number
of the students acquiring them provides a fascinating view to the point I am
striving to drive home.
|
Salary Range (in LPA) |
No. of students |
Example of Companies |
|
35 -50 |
5 |
Microsoft, Google |
|
25-35 |
20 |
Amazon, Adobe, Uber, ZS, Facebook etc. |
|
15-25 |
70-80 |
Many |
|
8-15 |
150 |
Many, including higher profiles of the
Mass recruiter cos., Some PSUs |
|
5-8 |
200 |
Many, including many core sector cos |
|
4-5 |
Rest |
Mass recruiters like TCS, Infosys,
Wipro, PWC, Capgemini etc. |
It is too apparent that though the students had
entered on comparable rankings in the entrance exams, all are not equal after
the years are over. Take a student who is joining at say, 35 LPA. His next
increment will fetch him a rise of about 4 Lacs which is the whole year’s
compensation for many of his/her fellow students in the same Institute. I
personally know a student, passed out 2 years ago from CS dept, is working in
Microsoft. He started at 40, which has become nearly 50 after an increment and
a later promotion, at the age of 24 only. Most of his classmates even could not
even think of nearing anywhere. But this guy was smart and has a high ambition.
He started a start-up with a few friends in the 3rd year itself. The
start-up was almost a non-starter for then, but the year of pain and trying had
earned him an obvious edge that soared him in the Microsoft interview. That now
provides him an annual increment of more than the annual salary of most other
engineering graduates even in the companies with that haloed name and fame that
the parents smirk about.
It’s a good time the parents really understood the
new world order.
~P.S. Update in December 2022 -
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