"Around the country, B-school and undergraduate professors with ties to big companies routinely recommend their best students as potential hires. Of course, recruiters continue to avail themselves of campus job fairs and more traditional means of scouring for talent. But more often than most students realize, money is part of the recruiting process. Sometimes the school benefits, as happens at the University of Houston. In other situations, professors themselves receive the corporate largess.
Direct payments to professors who offer recruiting tips are rare, according to company and campus officials. Instead, professors who receive corporate consulting fees or research grants sometimes pass along promising names as part of their relationship with companies hungry for talent."
Yes, for lots of students the recommendation of their professors is seen as objective and can really tip the scales between choosing which workplace to join. How much longer before companies in India add this aspect to their 'campus relationship program' ?
I think it is already done in many Indian technology institutes ... with the HODs recommending students, I specifically know of Sarnoff (a high end IT company) which uses professor recommendations ... however, no idea whether it happens on B School campuses. Probably one reason could be the relatively lower correlation between superior academic performance and on-job performance. A good management student, will not necessarily turn out to be a good manager.
ReplyDeleteApart from that, I think, that Indian B-Schools have a long way to go, before they can call themselves as "qualified researchers" as happens in the West. Somehow, it fails me - i have very rarely seen b-school professors giving consultancy to any of the "blue chip" mnc's/indian companies, that come for recruitment at b-school campuses. Though, a lot of consultancy happens at downstream companies, it has yet to percolate upwards to upstream. That might be one reason, why it is still light years (ok, it's an oxymoron!) away from indian b-schools currently.
ReplyDeleteBelieving a Professor word-to-word and recruiting a guy he recommends seems to me as an Organization's move to appease a Prof so that he 'consults' them at a relative lower price but gets higher satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of the comments on this post.
ReplyDeleteIndian B School profs still have a long way to go in terms of gaining street cred. There's very little or no research going on even in the haloed portals of the IIM's..
B-School placement committees need to be more proactive in terms of encouraging student-industry interactions.
The problem is not lack of talent..
Its identifying the right talent for the right job!
I am a business professor in the US, and I can tell you from my personal experience that some of the issues you bring up here and equally applicable in the US. For example:
ReplyDelete1. Most US business professors donot consult for companies. In fact, very few business faculty actually do any consulting.
2. The low correlation between superior academic performance and on-job performance is true for American students too, though I can not think of any good research studies on this topic.
3. "Street Creds", or legitimacy with practitioners as we call it in the US, is a major issue that confronts business faculty in the US too.
Thanks for the thought-provoking article. You can also visit my blog at http://allthingsbusiness.wordpress.com.