Deloitte, one of the leading B-school recruiters in India, has recently launched a national level competition - Campus Maverick, to test the business acumen of students from India’s top 60 MBA schools. The top global firm says the initiative is aimed at engaging with future talents in India and encouraging professional skills among the budding managers.
The competition involves live presentations at the regional rounds at four leading campuses across India, with senior business leaders as judges. The competition format comprises business cases and simulation contests amongst others. While regional round of the competition is underway at top B-school campuses including IIM Calcutta in East, DMS-IIT Delhi in North, SJMSoM- IIT Bombay in West and ISB in South, the Grand Finale will be held at Deloitte Office in Hyderabad on September 20.
In this interview with MBAUniverse.com,Mr. Hari Kumar, Principal, Deloitte, speaks on the thought process behind this competition, its scope and how it will help create a better connect between industry and academia. Highlighting broader aspect of such events, Mr Kumar feels that it encourages MBAs to acquire skills for Leadership, innovative thinking, teaming amongst other professional qualities. He also speaks on pedagogic initiative that can be taken by B-school to make their graduates more competent. Mr Kumar also speaks on changingexpectations of industry and corporate world from B-school graduates.
Interview:
Q: What is Campus Maverick aimed at? What is the thought process behind this initiative?
A: The Campus Maverick program is a platform to help uncover the young generation’s capacity for unconventional thinking, innovation, leadership, and thinking solutions for current day business issues. Initiated by Deloitte in 2012, this business solutions competition encourages management students from top B-Schools to gear up for the challenges of Leadership in a fast changing economic environment.
The theme for Campus Maverick is - Where Leaders Thrive. With the initiative aimed at creating a strong academia and corporate connect, we seek to build new age leadership competencies in future workforce with a strong emphasis on social responsibility. We also encourage students to be complete individuals, as well as competent professionals
Q: How many B-schools are participating in this season? How is it going to benefit MBA students?
Students from 60 top business schools are participating in Campus Maverick this year, including IIMs, ISB, Symbiosis, XLRI, and MDI. The competition gives management students a chance to understand and learn to work in teams, demonstrate their capacity for fresh and innovative thinking as well as develops new age leadership skills.
Q: How do you see the leadership quality and skills of average MBA students in India today?
MBA Students today gain a lot more exposure to quantitative and technology-based aspects of working in real business environment. It is important that we also emphasize the importance of developing people skills such as teaming, relationship building and leadership; critical and innovative thinking; and future focus. These are critical to success, and we value these skills when we hire and develop our people. Campus Maverick is a program to expose future workforce to these factors.
Q: What are the possible pedagogic initiatives that B-Indian schools can take to compete with global MBA talent pool?
A: We have some great B- Schools in India and their graduates are very successful – I have heard a lot of appreciation for them from global business leaders, particularly for their razor sharp focus.
Some of the areas that B-Schools here might want to look at are:
• Building the ability among students to organize and present ideas clearly and confidently to diverse audiences in diverse situations
• Helping their graduates gain the ability to hold engaging dialogues and share insights with business leaders confidently
• Exposure to more global trends, personalities and pioneering thinkers and leaders
Q: How are the expectations of industry and corporate world changing from B-school graduates in the last 3-5 years?
A: What drives change in our expectations of our people? It is the evolution and maturing of our businesses. As business evolves and matures, employees and prospective employees need to demonstrate that their thinking and capabilities suit current and emerging business needs. At the same time, some things remain unchanged – for instance, we have always looked for high technical, professional and leadership competencies in our people and I foresee we will continue to do that for a long, long time.
What may have evolved are our standards – the bar is continuously raised in the business world for greater depth of knowledge and capability, capacity to innovate, and ability to team and lead. Like in earlier years we continue to look for free and uncluttered thinking; innovative ideas; receptivity to learning the culture of the organization and the ability to adapt to it; and a global outlook.
Q: How B-schools can utilize their talent pool to help industry and corporate world and vice-versa?
A: Meaningful two-way relationships are essential for the success of both. The Campus Another way could be more collaboration on aspects of the curriculum and course content, more interactions between industry leaders and students in the academic setting.
Q: As a top B-school recruiter, how does Deloitte evaluate B-school graduates from Tier I and Tier II B-schools?
A: Our recruiting strategy involves identifying people who are highly driven, confident of facing diverse clients, think at the next level, and collaborate with our high-caliber workforce to solve multiple challenges. As an organization our constant endeavor is to build a workplace where leaders thrive. Our endeavor is to hire the best talents, who have the potential to be the leaders of tomorrow, who are not afraid to innovate, and who are socially aware and responsible.
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