Couple of year’s back I was in the same boat as many of today’s MBA aspirants are. Today, as a professor, I sit on the other side of the table taking GDs and Interviews of students who are in search for that coveted B-school tag; a ticket to success that will assure them a place in one of top Indian or MNC corporate houses.

However, it’s funny how the mistakes that are so glaring when you sit on the “safer” side of the table are not so evident when you are an aspirant. Nothing much has changed in all these years; year after year, students commit the same set of mistakes, fuelled partly by misguided coaching institutes and partly by ignorance.

In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to list six such areas that I believe, if taken care of, can brighten the chances of an MBA aspirant.

1. The GD is the biggest waron the way to an MBA admission.

For many, many aspirants, GD is a tense moment. Time is limited and others just won’t stop talking and hogging all the airtime. Therefore, one has to jump in and make a point. Or look for that quick opportunity to summarize. Or steal your moment of glory when someone pauses for breath. Or cut someone short.

For someone listening to the discussion, it seems so concocted. So artificial. In GD, we look for genuine students who have a decent hold over the subject and also have respect for others’ opinions.

As I always keep saying in my earlier articles, a good idea is to come to GD venue early and mingle with the fellow participants. Ask where they are from, what their backgrounds are. Show a genuine interest in knowing each other and being friends. Then you realize that suddenly the discussion is less of war and more of a friendly conversation. If not entirely, to some extent at least; because when you know someone, you automatically start to respect him/her more.

Also show a good interest in the topic being discussed…not behave like a leopard about to jump on its prey. Listen to others intently and show them you respect their opinion. Be in the discussion, forget you are being evaluated.

2. My interview is ruined. I couldn’t answer several questions.

There are all kinds of interviewees. Some are nervous from start, some appear normal and others seem over-confident. There are ways to bring out the best in each of them, or even make them show their true colors by employing a variety of techniques. For example, an interviewer might deliberately ask difficult or ambiguous questions, or ask repeatedly to unnerve a seemingly over-confident candidate.

However, whether one seems normal, stressed or over-confident, the purpose of each question is not to always elicit the correct answer. Many times questions are posed to see reaction, check a particular parameter in a candidate. Therefore, a wrong answer may not be the end of the road. It might – and this might seem unnatural – just be expected.

Far too many candidates get an I-have-lost-it attitude and show a sudden dip in performance, once they fail to answer couple of questions. Bear in mind that you haven’t been conclusively evaluated until the interview is over. So whether the answer are right or wrong, don’t try to assess your performance by looking at the face of the interviewer, because you never know if you are reading that face properly.

Each question is a new opportunity. Don’t lose it because you think you didn’t give a satisfying answer to the previous question

3. Undergraduate is underground.

It’s surprising how several candidates who appear to have scored well in their undergraduate courses fail to answer very basic questions on their subject. I once asked an Electrical Engineering student with more than 80% marks from a good institution what kind of motor the regular ceiling fan has, and didn’t get an answer.

Many engineering students fail to calculate the amount of current in a simple circuit of resistors and capacitors. Yet several of them answer questions on current business and political affairs well enough.

The explanation I get is unwittingly clichéd: “I studied them long back and don’t remember them now”. It’s hardly sufficient, however. MBA curriculum is rigorous and students are expected to have the ability to grasp the fundamentals and never let them go.

Your graduation course might be irrelevant for business studies from a pure content perspective, but for an interviewer, it shows your attitude towards academics and whether your learning is concrete or superficial.

4. I speak my mind. You see, I am honest, at least.

When the interview was already going good, I asked a girl candidate why she chose to go for an MBA. “Otherwise my parents will marry me off. I need some excuse”, she said. To me, this might be a perfectly honest answer and I give 100 out of 100 for that. But should I go ahead and select the candidate? Probably no, because her purpose is entirely different from what I am looking for in students.

Honesty is great, always. But one need not be crude, in order to be honest. A statement like “I am not sure what I want to do after MBA, but at least it will add to my overall skills and help me manage my career better” is also honest while putting things in a better light.

5. I have the best answer to all questions.

This is related to the previous question. While crude honesty might spell trouble, too much cooking up won’t help either. I once asked a candidate what he thinks about our school and what other B-schools he has applied to. “This is certainly the best and I have applied only to KIIT School of Management”, he said. It’s very hard to believe that an MBA aspirant applies onto to one B-school. Similarly I asked another what he dislikes about our admission process, and he said it was wonderful, even though he was kept waiting for several hours for the GD.

MBA students are expected to have a mind of their own and display maturity in their answers. So don’t go collecting the best answers to each question. There are no best answers. The answer that truly reflects you, and brings out the best in you in a mature and polite way (and not being crude) is your best answer.

6. I am great, but sorry don’t ask for any examples.

Many application forms ask the candidates to write their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the dreaded “tell me about yourself” question in the interview also prods you to speak a little about your strengths. Most candidates end up writing very generic strengths such as “hard working”, “committed”, “team player”, and so on. There may not be anything wrong in this, but to a reader, unless they are substantiated with example, these words don’t carry weight.

Many times, when I ask a student to prove to me how he thinks he is a good team player, I get a blank stare. A good practice is to write a sentence about a strength (e.g. A good team player because of my past association with several clubs and committees), rather than just a word. If that is not possible, always keep at least two examples ready to prove that you possess the strength.

You will see that it gives you much more confidence when you can prove what you claim.

Contributed by Suchin Kulshrestha, (Class of 2008, IBS Hyderabad)

Shruti is a 35 years old freelance corporate trainer. In her 10 years of corporate career, she has trained service line managers to top level executives, on various aspects of doing better in the B-world. From teaching soft skills to business communication, Shruti has fared quite well professionally. After finishing her MBA in HR, she gradually moved from recruitment to make her mark in training. With her passion for teaching, she now feels, it is time for her to go back and return the favor and use her experience of corporate training for teaching MBA-HR students.

Being a teacher in India is mostly perceived as a “fallback” career by most of us. This post, however, is intended to clear some of the misconceptions about taking up teaching as a profession. With no constant pressure and strain of achieving targets, I’d say, this is one of the most stress free professions. With increasing competition to excel in the corporate world and mad race for earning the highest incentives, work place stress is a very common problem among those who have just moved into the professional work zone, especially in IT, sales, marketing and finance. Therefore, many decide to take up a career in academics, in search of a better life, after working in the industry.

In order to be able to teach, one needs to possess thorough knowledge of the subject, clarity of thought, confidence, ability to articulate and passion for the profession. An MBA is one course where the class of students is most diverse. We all come from different background of education, experience and age. Everyone has a different approach and thought process. Therefore, equally diverse is the need of the faculty. A B-school faculty may comprise of from retired corporate executives, sharing their knowledge and wisdom earned during years of industrial and corporate experience, to specialized and well trained faculty with expertise on the particular subject.

The very first requirement to apply for faculty position in a college is a Masters. Most institutes prefer NET (National Eligibility Test) qualified candidates. NET is conducted by UGC (University Grants Commission) twice a year. Depending on your specialization or master’s degree, you can choose your subject to appear for NET. Preference is also given to M.Phil or PhD candidates.

One of the reasons, the young brigade hesitates from taking up teaching as profession is because of the low salary offered. However, with the pay commission, teachers these days get salaries that are comparable to the industry standards. Even private colleges these days have handsome salary packages to offer.

Another inhibiting factor for most of us is slow career growth. Although different institutes may have different ranking levels, usually the hierarchy is Assistant professor > Associate Professor > Professor/Reader.

B- Schools hire both visiting and regular faculty. Depending on your interests and choice, you can make yourself eligible for both. The current scenario of teaching at good B-schools these days however has changed. The eligibility criteria and qualification norms for faculties at B-schools have now become more stringent. Management now looks for a mix of experience and qualifications. This is due to the reason, that teaching MBA curriculum is different from the conventional mode of tutoring because of the need of equal emphasis on both theory and practice. It calls for using a variety of teaching methods like case studies, seminars, simulations, guest speakers and group projects to facilitate the learning process.

Some institutes, prefer hiring people like Shruti (at the beginning of this post) as part-time/visiting faculty. For those who do not want to leave the industry as well as hold a passion for teaching, working part time is a good option. They rely on their industry experience to teach and bring in fresh ideas from the field, offering students a more hands on experience of learning about the corporate world.

This is true that for some core electives, like economics, quantitative ability, accounts etc, institutes prefer more conventionally qualified faculty. Usually a master with PhD or NET qualification is the gateway to the academic field. Yet there are some electives, like business strategy, business ethics, business communications, sales and marketing and some components of human resource management that demands the insight of someone from the industry.

Teaching is a continuous learning process. In due course of time, it has evolved from being just an art to a more professional stage that today holds the potential of catapulting you to a different level academically.  If you have the patience and willingness, you don’t have to restrict your academic ambitions to just tutoring. There are many opportunities these days that are out there for academicians to consider. For instance, many lecturers and faculty members have their doors opened to the field of consulting as well.

Often, institutes have industrial tie ups to facilitate faculty research, consulting and technology exchange programs. This way a faculty member may get exposed to doing something like his/her industry counterpart and also get appropriately paid apart from the salary. Although this calls for some experience and time in the career and has limited scope of vertical growth, yet it gives you a chance to work independently as well as stay in touch with the ongoing development in the corporate world.

Another highly potential field for teachers these days is in corporate training. The way, institutes call executives from the industry to conduct lectures and seminars for their students, likewise, companies sometimes ask senior college faculties for organizing training sessions at a corporate level. They are asked to conduct sessions on topics that employees might not have learned during their formal education, like presentation and communication skills, business writing and other job specific functional and technical skills. There are also training certifications offered by academic bodies like Indian Society of Training & Development and XLRI Jamshedpur. With absence of too many academic programs to train the trainers in soft skills and personality development, there is a huge dearth of corporate trainers. This leaves the companies to invite B-school faculties and help them conduct such programs for their employees. To embark in the field of corporate training, however, one needs to be well aware and updated, confident, spontaneous, mature and creative.

The field of research also offers great opportunities to those in the field of academics. Many universities now conduct Faculty Research Programs encouraging faculties to engage in research activities. Although one might have to put up with stagnant growth and low salary, the satisfaction lies in the ability to think out of the box and contributing to the knowledge pool by getting the chance to get your research work published.

We have seen that how being a faculty these days is not just restricted to classroom teaching, thus breaking the stigma of stagnation and limited learning curve, that was once associated with the field of academics. Today’s educationists diversify their portfolio by venturing into new avenues. They work as freelance academicians, offer online tutoring, conduct career counseling at a professional level and much more.  With the high demand of well qualified and deserving candidates in India, this field is full of opportunities which are also always unaffected by the state of economy or recession. If you have the zeal and commitment towards your passion to teach, then there should be nothing stopping you.

Contributed by Isha Jajodia (class of 2010, IBS Gurgaon)