Globally the age of MBA is 28 years. But if you look into the b-school in India typically IIMs average age will be around 24-25.Why this discrepancy? Are we very much intelligent? Are we catching the managers when they are young? Well with the tradition of 50 years of excellence in business education IIMs set a benchmark of expectation to recruiters. They have a perception that in IIM you will get fresh mind without any work experience or very little experience. So the corporate experience is not valued. Typically IIM Lucknow has a work ex heavy batch so do IIM Bangalore. But other IIMs maximum percentage of students is 0-2 year’s experience.
Is there any drawback? Are global schools leveraging any advantage from workex heavy batch? Well in Indian context often diversity in b-school class is very limited except elite institution like IIM A or ISB. On the other hand if we see the batch diversity of Harvard, Stanford,Yale,IESE ,Insead people from various background like liberal arts,fashion,armed forces, banking and financial services,singer,startup company owner, NGO are coming together. The diversity and learning experience in enormous .On the other hand in India CAT is heavy favored towards engineers. More than 90% of batch is engineers.
Now question is why I think somebody in India should go to IIM or any other top b school early. Due to earlier trend of small workex MBAs companies are reluctant to recruit 3-4 years experience guys in certain coveted roles because it create an imbalance in organisation.Just take an example of a very renowned FMCG company. The typical entry level role in a marketing function is sales which involve lot of travelling. It is very hard to convince your recruiter that you will able to show same enthusiasm as a fresher in field after working 3-4 years in a centralized AC desk at an IT firm. If you are a more than 3 year exp guy your boss may be younger than you. Sometimes this destroys the work culture. Certain I Banking entry level job also have same story. Because in India the entry level job in I banking is analyst in some sort of KPO roles like equity research where you have to work for three years to get promoted as associate and go to front end. Indeed associate is the MBA level profile in outside India.
In a nutshell it is always better to go to IIM as early as possible. I made a mistake of not preparing for CAT from my third year engineering. So my request to the reader of this post please plan early for CAT and try to get into IIM within two years of graduation. If you are a more than two year workex guy look for A,B,c or obtain CFA level 1 at least before you enter b school if you want to pursue career in Finance.
Disclaimer: The thought express above is personal opinion of author from his b school day.
No comments:
Post a Comment