“All Study and no Fun will make jack a dull boy “is completely true saying for MBA students. Students aspiring for MBA’s often assume it to be a course of nightmare which if passed will give them handsome future. Many of them have heard the horrible stories of students only sleeping 5 hours a day which just bullshit. It’s actually a lot of fun too with practical experiences. They are given the chance to excel in whatever they are passionate about. Movies play a big role in their life; they act not only as an entertainer but also a great motivator and perception builder when one is too low or too bored. Some find solace; some find the lost laugh and some, the inspiration! Below is the listopedia of some of the movies that one must watch while preparing or doing the MBA course:

1. Thank you for Smoking: A brilliant movie showcasing the power of soft skills and great pitch. It’s the story of Nick Naylor who is a tobacco lobbyist who with the power of his speech turns the table for the tobacco companies in their toughest situations and handling media converting problems into opportunities. Full entertainer!
2. Ek Ruka hua faisla : An amazing movie that one can connect to the boardroom discussions. How can one man change the mind of the entire boardroom basis the power of reasoning? It’s a story of 12 men acting as a jury in the case of murder trial against a young boy. Out of twelve, eleven are convinced and found the boy guilty however one of them is doubtful and started putting questions on the floor taking it to an arousing level. Some may connect it with Hollywood movie “12 angry men” but this one taste good too. An exciting movie!
3. Glengarry Glen Ross: Every industry faces the tough time in one of their course. This one is story of Chicago- Real Estate Office. Story revolves around five characters who are salesman and driven hard to sale the properties where the first prize is Cadillac and the third prize costing one’s job. An Eye opener for harsh sales life which still prevails in India.
4. Guru: It’s a story of an aspiring entrepreneur who rises from the street of villages in Gujarat to becoming one of the biggest business tycoons. It has shown two sides of the man who indulges in corruption, lies and business politics as well right side being his handwork, willpower, positive attitude and persistence. A struggle many of the budding entrepreneurs will face too.
5. Miracle: Based on a true story, it depicts the power of teamwork and compassion and how one man takes his time from nowhere to winning the game in the Olympics beating the best team in the world. For MBA students one could gauge it as creating a new team, challenges faced in putting them together and finally achieving the unachievable task. Later similar story happened in bollywood named as “Chak De” which was again a blockbuster.
6. Rocket Singh: This movie is a story of many of us who dreams of starting its own company after some work experience at our jobs, however there is little diversion in this movie wherein our protagonist sees a gap in Post-sales services and understanding it as an opportunity starts his own company capturing the complete local market creating a brand of himself following the simple principles of life like honesty and getting the trust of customer. He does all this while working in similar company. An entertainer!
7. Up in the Air: It’s a story of a private human resource consultant who is constantly on the run from one city to another firing people in good or bad way. It depicts his suitcase life which many of us aspire but also the loneliness which dwells within making our heart as poetic. The ironic part is that the he himself finds in the situation where his job is at stake. Quite an amazing movie showing the dark side of corporate one never wants to face.
8. The Towering Inferno: It’s a story of a disaster happening in a building and how it is controlled with series of events unpredictable events happening. A classic case study on disaster management on how problems can knock on the doors unsaid and how with one’s courage, patience and acting right can help it curb it. Must watch for management students.   
9. Wall Street: All the finance aspirants doing their MBA, this movie is a must watch. It’s a story of a stock trader who is more than willing to do anything in order jump up the ladder. He at one point is successful to achieve the top but then falls very steeply getting the lesson for the life. There are no shortcuts in life, even if it’s there, it’s not sustainable. This movie is followed by another sequel Wall Street: Money never sleeps which came after 23 years although was not as big hit as its former but this one had similar crux too.
10. Lincoln: An amazing and true endeavor of the President Abraham Lincoln which made his name written in golden ink in the pages of the history. It’s the story of two wars, one, American Civil war which was spreading all over the America, majorly affecting the southern states and another war of Lincoln with his Congress Members convincing them ban slavery from United States. It’s a story of hardship, wit and wisdom how one man with his indomitable will convinces his counterparts leading them to pass a historic amendment that will change the world history. In organizations many times we feel it tough to impose that one idea getting friction from everywhere as people are averse to the change but when approached rightly can really make things work out. One thing our history has always taught us that the best ideas are always opposed initially and latter they have changed the picture.

 Hope this collection of movies add some value to our approached towards student, personal or professional lives that we live.

Contributed by Apurva Singhi (Class of 2011, IBS Hyderabad)

Career is not just making to a high paid job. Career is the journey that begins from those wayward days of our childhood when we randomly change decisions of what we want to be and finally decide on a certain point what we actually want to see ourselves as and then we start working towards it. When I say it’s a journey, I account all the struggles and hard work that one account in reaching to that desired set profile. I still remember when I was a kid and some relative asked me “So what do you want to grow up to be?” and I reprocated saying that “I want to become the guy who sells cylinder”, at that point in life that kid in me thought the cylinder guy checks the notebooks of the parents and all elder people, so he is some kind of teacher of all elder people and that must be a very heavy position to be at. But as we know time teaches us all. Now we laugh on such kiddish experiences but in actual by the virtue of our changing minds we have taken some serious decisions to be where we are today.

Going back to my first point, wherein I said “we build our career the day we actually fix what we want to be and start working towards it with all determination”. You must be wondering that this guy has been talking quite a lot about working towards our career. With working towards it, I mean the feel of attaining the desired set goal becomes the knock of our head at each and every hour and we do something or the other to mould ourselves to be able to reach to our set agenda. For that matter, let it be the extra time you dedicated to academics, the amount of television that you might have cut, hangouts that you ignored, novels you read and news that you have been updated with. Everything accounts today to be the content full PGPM candidate that you are and that entire working up shows up at the one manner or the other.

Now that you have taken up the firm decision to pursue PGPM and take up a job in your respective specializations or to be an entrepreneur now is the time you need to introspect upon your strengths as this is the final degree for most of you which is going to account for the entire amount of the study that you have done till now. With that competitive spirit on, you need to be a more sound and more content full person that rest of the students. Yes, with that I mean you need to outshine to make it to the best of the job profiles or even excel in your personal venture.

When a company comes to a post graduate institute to hire freshers it comes with the lot of excitement to hire young talents and it basically looks for three things:- “You”, “Your Current knowledge”, “Your urge for knowledge and learning ability”. You must be wondering when I say that the company looks for “You”. Yes I mean it, that’s the most non-ignorable part of human nature, even if we decide that we do not want to judge someone, it’s a natural act that we still end up having some notions about the person even post the decision of not to judge. When we personally judge people whome we want to be friends with and who are we compatible with in the same manner the HR looks at you in a manner if you can ally and work compatibly with the other employees. So that “You” factor constitute of your entire personal and professional traits that you have carried and grown up to be, in short we name it as your Personality and Attitude.

The term personality as it says is very individualistic and personal, it varies from person to person, some are introvert some are extrovert, some people dress in a certain manner and some in another. That everything is part of one’s personality. Like a doctor is expected to have know-how of a human body in the same manner a PGPM professional is expected to be well spoken and presentable. The organization is just not the products it deals in or the services it offers, an organization is the group of people who work together to make it meets it objective. So the group of people work together to make the product or offer services and hence it makes the organization. As simple as that, the same organization which comes to hire in the colleges will not like to be associated with someone who is not groomed and not well spoken as tomorrow being the face of the company such resource would hinder the image of the org. in the market. The very first thing we observe in a person is the clothes and they say so much about you. The way you keep your clothes and the way you wear them shows the kind of the person that you are. So whenever you sit for an interview or even when you join work, your dressing sense has to be elite, clean and professional. Everyone likes to have well dressed people around (which we call “crowd”). So even the companies want to have good crowd working for them in the same manner we expect.

With so much of competition around, the world has become well spoken. For that matter even we see small kids talking so well in the shopping complex and around. Being a MBA, you are expected to be well spoken. With well spoken, I do not mean just English with some heavy jargons and vocabulary. Being the natives of India, we need to be good at hindi too. As most of the times you have to use both the languages at work or with the clients. For an example if someone asks you “ Kya hal hai?” You just can’t say “ I am good, you say, How are you?” That’s an insult. You have to revert in the same language the person talks to you in. So with well spoken I mean that you need to have a good hold of English and Hindi and use these respective languages in a simple and clear manner to make your point sound more content full.

Most of the times we get so tensed when an interviewer asks us the question like “Who is the Home Minister of India” or solve “xyz93d * 23xd= ?”(P.S- Please do not actually solve it because even I do not know what it means). So in actual my dear friend, they actually are “Ok” with you know knowing the answers of these questions as this is just your attitude check. We Indians just cannot say “No”. Like most of us, even if do not know the answer we will make some 3-4 guesses and post that will say that we do not know, and some will think for some minutes and give the correct answer. But the least will have the confidence to say “Sir/Mam I don’t know can you please tell me the answer?” That is absolutely fine if you do not know as google has it all. But in actual these are your Attitude check. For those who answer these questions they obviously impress the interviewer with their I.Q but those who guess and answer wrong or waste time in answering it even correctly are the kind of resource which will waste the time in figuring out the things and after they affirm themselves that it is not happening from them they will walk up to the people around or their bosses to understand after wasting the most important thing- “Time”. So that shows up your learning attitude at work and those questions are put to judge your attitude and knowledge. Your manager doesn’t mind to explain you, but no one will stand an attitude in wasting time and making false promises. And always remember an interview or a discussion with your reporting managers is a two way process. If they question, you have all the right to gain the knowledge from them and question back. That shows even if you do not have that much of knowledge but atleast you have an urge to knowledge (and that is what they look for). That is where your attitude shows place and it is an important aspect in framing your career.

That is why we come across companies that hire students with even average and low grades from the students with great academic grades who sit for the same hiring sessions because it might be possible that “You” quotient in those students must be more appealing than the traits of the other competitors and hence they make a better fit in that job profile. So along with the academic grades, one needs to work on one’s personality and attitude in making up to the desired career. Good Luck!

Contributed by Rahul Wadhwa, (Class of 2013, IBS GURGAON)

            So you’re done with your MBA and gotten a job in the field of Marketing. Well, for most it starts with sales because to have a good successful career and have deep understanding of your business, understanding the ground realities is essential. Therefore, no matter how much you might hate selling, travelling from one client to another all day, believe me, it’s going to be worth it.

            The first few years into your job are not easy. You do start as a trainee so the first few months are your honeymoon periods but it only gets tough from there. The responsibilities you handle will seem insignificant to you compared to what you were taught during MBA. You might feel that what you’re doing is not worth to be done by an MBA graduate and you won’t be blamed for thinking so. But what you learn in college is not going to take you where experience will. As a marketer it’s important to understand the psyche of your customers, it’s important to know what happening in the market, what your competitors are doing and what your customers think about you. And the best way to gather information on all these parameters is staying between your customers, on the field. The management is the steering, but really drives a vehicle forward are the wheels, the sales team.

            You will often find yourself discussing about marketing strategies with your colleagues because that is what you were taught in college. You’ll be the people the management will go to, to understand the dynamics of the market and you can be proud of that.There will be times of frustration when you’d feel that you’re in the wrong place but that’s how successful careers are built. Gradually, you’ll get used to your new life, it’s a great feeling to be able to spend money that’s earned by you. You will want to spend a lot and you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from buying presents for your friends and family.

            Here are some experiences you go through after your MBA in Marketing:

• Vision: You’ve learnt quite a lot during the course about how different businesses work and thus you have a deeper understanding about the corporate world. This helps you make wiser career decisions and therefore, a good growth in whichever organization you work.

• Finance: You have learnt quite a lot about finance during your MBA. You know how companies manage their finances, you know how different financial institutions and banks operate. Thus, you have a clear understanding of how you can manage your wealth effectively by making the right investment decisions.

• Skills: Your skills and knowledge have been enhanced a lot as you know what you learnt during graduation and now you have the management skills to use them efficiently. Every organization wants its employees to be good managers, no matter what their designation or work is. Thus, what makes you an ideal candidate is your knowledge coupled with the skills to use them in a wise manner.

• Growth: Whichever company you join, you experience rapid career growth as a result of your MBA. You are more relied upon by the management and if a higher position opens up, you have an edge over other candidates.

• Decision Making: The core skill that MBA teaches you is how to make quick decisions. As you have studied hundreds of case studies during your course, you know what are the dos and don’ts when a particular situation arrives. Thus, even though you might be new to sales, you know how to lure your customer in and make that sale.

• Power: You realise that you are eligible to work in any kind of organization you wish, given the parameters you and the company decide for each other. It’s an MBA from Marketing that usually gets the higher position in an organization and they are often the most sought after lot because it’s sales that brings revenues and it’s marketing that puts the company in front of its customers. You realise that you have the power to alter the course of the company. Well, not immediately but you know what’s happening in the field and your feedback will always be taken seriously by your seniors.

• Personal Growth: After getting an MBA, expectations are always higher; not just that of your friends, family and employers but your expectations from yourself too. You are no longer satisfied with mediocre results but strive to reach excellence in everything you do. A word of caution here, not always do your lessons learnt in classrooms would help you, most of the time you’ll have to rely on your personal and professional experiences. You are well equipped to set personal goals for yourself and it feels immensely satisfying to achieve them.

• Respect: There will always be people who might hate you for being an MBA just because they are not. And it’s good that they do, because it means you have an edge over them. You have much deeper understanding when it comes to managing a business unit and your boss would be more trusting in you than the others. You know the 4 Ps and even though you don’t apply them directly, they do play a vital role subconsciously in helping you make the right decisions.

• Money: The most important aspect, for many. It’s not a secret that MBAs are paid much more than an average graduate. Of course, it depends on various parameters but if all those parameters are kept the same, an MBA would win. As a marketer, you are more of an extrovert, open to interactions and love communicating with different people. Well, if you’re not, it’s time you start doing it because perception management is all there is in the corporate world. As, Bill Gates rightly said, If you can’t make it good, make it look good. Even if you’re not hitting your targets much, it’ll help you if your seniors know you, you keep yourself in constant touch with them. You’re a marketer and all you have to market is yourself.

So, this is how you will spend your fist few years after an MBA in Marketing. Yes, you’ll have to be quick to grab the right opportunities, sell yourself first then the product or service and not hide in a corner waiting for your work to speak for itself. You will also be able to understand that if you don’t claim your rewards, they’re claimed by someone else, someone even less deserving. So, all in all, the first few years will be vital to understanding how the corporate works and once you’re past the first 5 years, you’ll be enjoying the ride.

Contributed by Sachin Jalan ( Class of 2014, IBS HYDERABAD )

Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18^th century French philosopher was once asked, “What is happiness to you?” He answered, “A good food and a good banker.” A saying which is almost 300 years old is as true in our era as it was then because both wrong food and a wrong banker can screw your happiness.

We live in a world with our 6.5 billion+ friends and 1.2 billion countrymen who are some or other way connected to money. Its management is basically what we call banking today.

Globally definition of banking had changed since ages. Prima facie Banking started with lending of resources thousands of years back in various civilizations which got its head from the pawn shop culture of Europe and full body later in regime of monarchy in mid fifteenth northern Europe.

Banking in India got its color after Independence and serious banking started after opening up of the economy in 90s when it got into the mainstream and the country took it seriously which became an aggressive catalyst in fueling the growth across industry.

Indian Banking today is marriage of intelligent money, technology and personalized relationship. Gone are the days when it was limited to depositing and lending of money. Today it has become more than that. Retail Banking, wholesale banking, Digital banking ,NR Banking, Business banking ,Wealth Management are all the fancy names that banks gives to their division to target and service respective segments.

In India there are approx 3 lacs+ bankers for a population 1.2 billion which is approximate one banker for every 4000 Indian which is quite a low ratio as compared to western and developed world.

 Past couple of years the industry is growing at the rate of 20% YoY and a huge workforce is required to serve the population as banking has become an indispensible part of each and every individual’s life. Govt. strict policies and monitoring have also ensured the movement of money being routed via legitimate channel with Banks playing the chief roles. With penetration of Internet and Smartphone banking has reached to everyone’s pocket and with this a larger population has started using this as banking medium instead of unaccounted traditional medium.

This is also one of the most profit oriented industry which is glittered with attractive perks and attracts talents at all management levels.

There is a huge competition among banks to hire the right talent and often we have seen the same won by private banks because of its capability to offer attractive packages and perks. Due to huge demand of bankers and talent crunch, recruiters have turned their roads towards various Top Business schools in search of the right talent. At many B schools, banking alone is responsible to hire almost 25 % of batch.  They are one of top paymasters to the fresher’s for their services.

But why Bankers love to hire MBA’s?

• Knowledge & Understanding: Common sense is yet not so common is what we keep hearing these day and Banking is more than common sense. Banking is a complex business today where it has became borderless.This industry is full of smartest people and often attracts the same. The two years course would carve the best out of the student to make them industry-ready. Updated with latest industry trends they are grilled under various mock situations on various management subjects in order to give them the taste of business. They are subjected to different problems to be solved ensuring the best of them comes out and industry gets the right talent.
• Quick Adaptation: Fresher’s are often one of the most sought talents by banking industry as they are ready to get mould into the right corporate citizens as per what business demands. Their zeal and fresh perspectives often adds dynamism to the banks culture which is yet running on old fundamentals and badly needs change. Management trainees are found to have right attitude to serve which often leads to value addition to the business of the banking.
• Interpersonal Skills: Communicating in-house or with the client, verbal or non verbal is one of the important skills the recruiters look upon on choosing their candidates very carefully. Profiles like Relationship Management or Wealth Management often involves customer interactions and so it became very important for banker to best at these soft skills to cater to KRA’s of the company.
• Analytical Expertise: Technology is the heart of today’s banking ecosystem without which it is nothing. Top B-Schools often funnels the right candidates to provide admission only if they fits all parameters of which “general analyzing skills” is one of the important parameters. This skill is further honed at the b-school via courses on various analytical tools which would give them insights to precious information’s which is hidden among numbers. Such information often leads to building up of long term strategy as well as short term tactics. Banks offering such analytics or product management profiles to candidates often provides a good packages and perks as it is still less available talent in the country.

History and trends suggests that every year banks that recruit from campus comes back next year increasing pay scales and grades before going to campus each year. They would give details of their star hires from the same campus with their growth trajectories and current positions trying to attract talent at the campus too.

However such trophies are not earned by all business schools. These are earned by the ones who gardens and nourishes the same through the years developing the expertise that would be practically utilized as a link between societies and corporate.

Apart from IIM’s and few other business schools, other has just copied the trends without developing in-house expertise just to attract corporate in order to attract students in order to attract money.

One of top business schools, ICFAI Business School alone is known as producer of the highest number of bankers in the country since years. It is running dedicated course for the students and the same is taught by experienced professors and industry people giving them what the industry demands and making them full baked cookie which are ready to be grabbed in the market.

Contributed by Apurva Singhi (Class of 2011, IBS Hyderabad)