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.

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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.

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

As one of my favourite authors Chandrakant Bakshi rightly said once that every young man who is about 25 years old have to answer three fundamental questions of life.

1. Selection of right career
2. Selection of right life partner and
3. Selection of right Dharma (how does he want to live his life)

Yes, I know and understand the difficulty while answering each of above questions. However, here I want to restrict myself to only first question, i.e. selection of right career. This becomes the most important question of life. Though I am a strong believer that even if you end up with the wrong selection, the life does not stop! But it is important to go for the right one from the beginning and not to leave any chance for any wrong selection.

The difficulty of being a student and that too a graduate is just atrocious! I can see a hamlet in every fresher graduate who is always in confusion about his or her career options.

Let’s begin with commerce graduates. Their confusion would be to opt for management study? Or for professional courses like CFA? Or to go for evergreen professions like Chartered Accountant? Or to prepare for competitive exams and appear in various governments entrance exams to get a government job.

Further, it becomes all the more difficult for engineering students who have to select the field they want to pursue their Masters in. Should they continue with the same field of their graduation or opt for something different that promises a good career. A good offer is expected if you are from a good college. So you have to apply micro economics 101(oops, is it too early?) and evaluate opportunity cost of leaving that job offer and to go for master degree?

For science graduates such as B. Pharma or B.Scs, it is can be harder to select their master’s degree. They have to decide whether they want to continue in science field and do Pharma or M.Sc or opt for a PHD? However, I don’t think that MBBS students would face any of these issues as they are different class of people and they do not live in any dilemma.

But believe me, it is easier said than done and it’s a solid dilemma wherein very few people actually can guide you, except yourself. Further, this becomes all the more difficult if you are dating someone since your college days and the sheer pain of leaving that someone special is making you so nervous and you cannot think anything else.

Anyways, let’s get back to some serious business as you have to find an answer for yourself. But before that I want to make you think so as to help you in selecting a right option for you.

To start off, observe and think what has changed in India in recent times. The way our businesses runs, work is done, the functioning of government, a change in technology, etc. Just about everything has changed at such a rapid speed that that we can’t ignore them.

In 1991, Dr. Manmohan Singh initiated reforms and freed up India from license raj and indicated for an open economy, the sleeping entrepreneurship of this country arose. Indian economy started functioning in full throttle and business environment became more vibrant. Private sector became an integral part of the economy. In addition, foreign multinationals started investing in India to capture a huge market. Furthermore, since the beginning of the 21st century, India has started shining, although backed by a global growth phenomenon.

All of these factors discussed above created huge demand for professionals with specific skill sets. The manpower that possesses knowledge of various subjects can run any business professionally.  There was a huge shortage of manpower of that calibre in this country for a long time. Thus, a new era started in which abundant opportunities became available for people who possessed such skill sets.

Can anyone guess which academic course in India provides knowledge of various subjects relevant to business in shortest time period? Yes, my friends, your answer is correct, MBA.

You might be aware that MBAs offer various specializations, mainly in the field of Finance, Marketing, Human Resource, Information Technology, Operations. Let us look at a brief summary of the potential opportunity for each of the specialization as shown below.

Specialization	Areas to be strengthen during MBA	Opportunities
Finance	Sound general knowledge, Good communication skills, Command in reasoning, Logic, Well versed with all the subjects of finance and daily reading of one financial daily, Strong hold on MS Excel, Power point and Word	Public and private sector banks (Indian as well as foreign) Investment banks, NBFCs, Insurance companies, Public sector units, Consulting, Industry and Corporates, KPOs, High end back offices of foreign multinationals, Education
Marketing	Well versed in marketing subjects, Good communication skills, Reading of one newspaper, Creativity, Willingness to travel MS Excel, Power point and word	Market research firms, Advertisement agencies, PR department of corporates, Firms providing marketing support, FMCG companies, Financial Institutions like banks, Insurance companies, NBFCs, Industry and corporates, Education
Human Resource	Good communication skills, MS Excel, Power point and word, Soft skills, Knowledge of labour laws and regulations etc.	Recruitment firms, Industry and corporates, Financial institutions, Training and coaching institutes Education
Information Technology,Supply Chain and Operations	Well versed in IT.	IT companies, IT departments of industry, corporate and government, financial institutionsLogistic companies, government, industry and corporates, Education, Government jobs, Industry and Corporates

The list goes on. But two things are certain that there will always be lot of demand for an MBA in future as India is the place for business and lots of MNCs are venturing into India. So don’t worry about a job opportunity.

It is important that one’s attitude should be of learning during initial period of career and not of earning. You will definitely be at good place in future but for that certain things are important. Continuous upgradation of skill sets and information, be it through reading, writing, or through any other medium is inevitable.

Second thing is that even after the completion of MBA, an additional degree or any other course which is relevant to your field becomes utmost important as it will give you an edge and you will have a grip on your subject which will help you climb the corporate ladder faster.

In the end, I just want to say that there is an ocean of opportunities is available at the end of an MBA. So just do it!

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Contributed by Janmang Menhta ( Class of 2010, IBS AHEMDABAD )