MBAUniverse.com Column on Jobs & Careers: ‘5 ways of finding Opportunity in Adversity’

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
July 25, 2016
You are a fresh MBA graduate and you haven’t got placement yet. How this problem is really an opportunity? Read more to find out in this regular column by MBAUniverse.com Jobs & Career Consulting Editor Indira Bisht.

The current downturn and its impact on employment is no secret. In this scenario, no MBA school has been left untouched by the fact that companies are not hiring. The bad news came too late and even institutes with a strong placement record saw a long recruitment period, low average salaries and a new set of recruiters like PSUs who would possibly have never been so sought-after in the past.

If you are from a Tier II B-school, if you are lucky then you have found a job, if not, you are sitting on the bench hoping for the scenario to change and are now scoping out opportunities on your own without much prep or information. Frantic calls to consultant, posting your resume on job portals and talking to seniors are how you are going about your job search and mostly you are feeling low about this experience. You have a loan to pay off; you were looking forward to getting a job, working and learning; now, you are just waiting to hear back from someone who can offer you a job. It’s a grim scenario indeed and although you know that there are many others like you facing it, that doesn’t make this any easier. What should you do? As a recruiter, I feel the first step towards managing this situation is to understand a few essential truths:

•        Taking an optimistic, proactive approach helps. Feeling negative, low, anxious, stressed, guilty is a dangerous road. It’s negative thinking, will leave you drained out and it will not allow you to take stock of the situation and get a perspective.

•        You are a management graduate and your primary skills are managing problems and creating out-of-the-box, relevant solutions. Use your skills and approach the current situation as a problem not as a tragic life scenario.

•        You need to understand the reality and that it is here to stay. Denial or evasion is not going to help. Also, this scenario is not going to change dramatically in a short time-period.

•        You are not going to get a high salary this year. Mr. Saral Mukherjee, Placement Chairperson, IIM A, while talking to mbauniverse.com mentioned, “There is more than 30% dip in the average salary of the batch”. This phenomenon is seen across B-schools. If the top league is struggling to secure high salaries, this is an indication that the salary levels for freshers have undergone a correction and you have to reconcile with this fact."
 
So what does a fresher have to do to get started on his/her career? Read on to find out:

1. Leverage your Networks – Job portals and consultants are usually the best ways to get a job in the market. Currently, however that’s not the case. Job portals are flooded with resumes of freshers and consultants are not working on a lot of positions since organizations that are recruiting prefer the employee referral method for reasons of cost-cutting. Your best bet is therefore to network with those who are already working with your target organizations. Since you are a fresher, most of your network would compose of those who are also freshers, and therefore your best strategy is to use “second-degree contacts” (friends of a friend, family members etc.).

Also, a good network to tap into is your B-school alumni. You could ask your institute or access any e-groups in order to seek help and leads for job openings. Cultivate these contacts and speak with them to understand their suggestions. These relationships are relevant for your career life and I suggest hard-nosed professionals with many years of experience to focus on this as well. If you start now, you are starting far earlier than many others. 
  
2. Public Sector Units, Development Sector & NGOs – You might be surprised at reading these terms when it comes to choices after an MBA. The truth however is that Public Sector Units emerged as recruiters on many top B-school campuses this placement season.

Mr. Ramadorai, CEO of TCS mentioned at the recent convocation at IIM-Indore explained the context of this trend “Indian model of a piloted course and reliance on a domestic economy actually looks more stable than many other more export oriented counterparts. This is even resulting in a reverse brain drain of sorts. Your own placements reflect this trend as seen from the tilt away from Investment Banking to now include Education, Pharma and even PSUs.”

Economic Times recently noted, “Lower salaries have also prompted public sector banks to visit management institutes this year. Union Bank of India, which is a new recruiter at IIMs, has made the highest number of offers to IIM-A students, while others such as Bank of Baroda and IDBI replaced top-notch investment banks that always grabbed the limelight at IIMs earlier.”
 
Professor Ashoka Chandra, Principal Advisor & Professor, HR & Organisational Beahviour at IMI emphasises students’ need to look at this situation in a positive fashion;  “this is a good time to re-evaluate the typical thought process which makes MBA students look at careers in a narrow way; opening up your horizons allows you to see many opportunities that you would not have otherwise paid attention to. For example, looking at Public Sector Units, International and National Agencies which provide many interesting options is a good way to go. Research with these organizations is a function that opens up a lot of exciting opportunities for fresh MBA students who are typically ‘high-achievers’. Research-based consultants have a high demand in the international market which leaves you open to many attractive options in the future.”
 
Looking at NGOs working in an area that interests you can give you a lot of relevant work experience in corporate social responsibility, fund-raising and managing operations or projects, marketing & communication. Raghav Datta, Founder, Omerta Consulting suggests that the focus of fresh MBA graduates should be to start working, since a lot of learning and understanding in terms of career planning happens during work. “It is imperative that these students find avenues such as the development sector or NGOs to work for and start their career”. Raghav also sees the current scenario as being favourable for its impact of challenging the typical MBA-student think of ‘MBA-Traditional Job’ progression.
 
“Development sector is no more a ‘career of default’ but a ‘career of preference’ around the world and with an ecosystem of institutes which train students, organizations that are funding development initiatives for philanthropic or investment reasons and finally organizations like Acumen and Technoserve which provide perfect opportunities for high-achieving professionals.” says Parth Tewari, Country Director, India for Technoserve an alumnus of Stanford Business School and a McKinsey consultant. Organisations like Technoserve and Acumen provide excellent opportunities for management students & professionals to engage with the development sector. 
  
3.      Target smaller companies, start-ups, adjacent industries - Figure out which are your industries of preference – media, telecom, fmcg and then scope out smaller organizations that wouldn’t otherwise feature on your priority list and approach them on your own. For example, within media, digital media companies continue to hire even while the conglomerates have frozen hirings.  Start-ups and smaller companies typically don’t get a lot of talent since they compete with well-established firms but they offer rich experience which would allow you to work across departments in many roles. A lot of top B-schools’ alumni have struck out on their own in the last few years and working with them will also give you very rich exposure.
 
What I would strictly recommend is meeting them and evaluating the company that excites you the most and where you feel the top management has clarity about the way forward. Looking at the credentials of the entrepreneurs is also important. The fact that the salary would be low is a reality but in today’s context even top B-schools grads are joining at low salaries so you should reconcile to the drop in the salaries. It’s a small price to pay and if you are good at negotiations, you could also talk to the company about an incentive-based system/salary revision in 6 months’ or even some equity. Start-up experience in a well-managed company can really add a lot of weight to your resume and will make you an asset to any big organization which you can target when the economy is back on track.

You also need to explore the industries that are hiring in the current environment and research to find out where you fit in. Education, Pharma, Healthcare and Telecom continue to hire and therefore you would benefit from understanding which roles in these industries can provide you with the starting point in your career.
Parth suggests freshers to focus on the ‘non-traditional’, be it in terms of non-traditional professions, industries, or adjacent industries (a market complementing mainstream industries – ex. Cold Storage industry complements Processed Foods business) and non-traditional working arrangements that would lean towards a higher incentive-based salary and a lower base figure.
 
4.      Academia – You finished your education thinking that’s the last time you are going to see a classroom for a while, so why am I suggesting academia as an option? Because one of the few industries that are not affected by recession is education; as it turns out, it also promises a very bright future in the Indian scenario. If you feel a calling for this, it would be a great time to take this up; if not, you could spend some time researching on a topic that appeals to you or where you are looking to build your career. If youth marketing interests you, research on it, create market-relevant research report and studies that include the companies that you wish to work for. This will showcase your interest and passion in the best possible way and will pave the way for you to work in a company in an industry of your choice.

Prof. Chandra talks about the appeal of academics as a career choice. “Faculty in a top MBA School gets benefits at par with the corporate world. Additionally, it provides one the autonomy to work on what interests you, continuously learn, integrate your work, access international opportunities and take up corporate consulting assignments. It is certainly demanding but it is also a highly fulfilling career”. Prof. Chandra, has a PhD in Solid State Physics from Cornell University, has been an entrepreneur, secretary to the Government of India and prefers academia as a career. “MBA schools routinely face the deficit of good faculty and the demand for this talent will go only go up, so the future is bright.”

5.      Entrepreneurship – This one is a bit tricky. Most MBA students lack work experience and some might have student loans to pay off therefore this isn’t an area for everyone to venture into. But for those who are interested in this area, this would be as good a time to start as any. But, to start a business purely because there isn’t a job available is not something I would recommend.
 
Prof Chandra suggests looking at the ‘Informal Sector’ which presents low entry barriers and therefore “one needs to bring in intellectual capital to start. There are a multitude of options available here and one can look at venture capital or start on your own.” 
 
6.      Temping – Abhay Kapoor, GM-HR at Ranbaxy talks about the opportunity that lies in temping, which is a big trend in the Indian market. His advice to fresh MBA graduates is to also explore this option and connect with big companies like MaFoi, Teamlease etc which undertake temping for large organizations. “Temping provides students relevant exposure. In the current scenario, there has been a correction in the salaries and all fresh MBA graduates need to understand this aspect and reconcile to it. Their primary focus needs to be on picking up relevant work experience at this stage.”
Overall, it’s clear that opportunities exist; they might not look like how you expected them to look i.e, traditional job in a function and industry of your choice but they are all around. Finding the opportunities is going to be about researching for information, networking in order to get specific information, grouping together with others like you and creative problem-solving.

What you absolutely must do before you start out is to have clarity on what kind of a job in what kind of a company works for you personally and leverages your strengths and what are your priorities with reference to a job. It’s quite possible that you did not answer these questions and expected to get a “good job in a good company” and start your career and then evaluate things as you progress. I wouldn’t say that is an excellent approach but it is the typical approach and thanks to the recession it’s not so typical anymore. I would qualify this as a positive outcome of the current scenario.

I would like to leave you with this thought - In his cult book Managers, not MBAs, Henry Mintzberg mentions “McCall….assignment of jobs. He refers to a study in one major company that found a signification relationship between early job challenge….and subsequent managerial success”.  Mr Ramadorai, CEO of TCS mentioned at the IIM-Indore Convocation -09 “As you step into your new careers , it is useful to understand that life need not start with a bang---you have to build it step by step. Life experiences at the grass root level help to build up a huge vocabulary, upon which you can draw as you grow in your career.”

The problem is short-term but a good solution should provide your career a long-term direction and professional payoffs.  However, in order to create these long-term solutions, you also need to be clear about what direction you want your career to headed in.  This is an important question in itself? How should you plan your career, where should you work and in what function ? Should you start working and hope to discover the answers on the way; should you have a clear idea at the beginning of where you are headed at the end of 20-30 yrs; or is it a combination of the two? This is a question that I’ll attempt to explore in my next column on MBAUniverse.com.
 
Columnist Indira Bisht runs Spinach Placements, a recruitment agency which she founded in 2008. A post-graduate from MICA in Brand Management, she has worked with companies like Hindustan Times, India Today, exchange4media and Miditech India. She also has a MA (Intl. Relations) from JNU.
She is the Consulting Editor for the MBA Jobs & Career domain on MBAUniverse.com.