With business schools being a consistent source for high potential talent pipeline, how do companies ensure that they get the best? People Matters talks to industry experts to find out the defining parameters.

A medium to ensure consistent in flow of high potential talent –campus recruitment is a critical part of an organisation’s talent strategy. with talent being scarce, mba students are generally hired with a plan to be trained and fast tracked into leadership positions. with such high stakes, companies need to ensure that they not only get the best, but also the ones who will be the right fit for the company and will stay for a longer term. however, there is no dearth of colleges that provide an mba degree with no real check on quality and this leaves employers confused for choice. in such a market, how do organisations pin down colleges they want to recruit from?

Besides rankings which are uniformly referred to by almost all employers, there are other factors which impact where companies hire from. for instance, availability of required skill sets in a particular b-school and how those skills are valued by the hiring organization for the role they are hiring for makes a difference to which school the organisation will recruit at. The perception of the company’s brand in the campus and performance of alumni working with the company are two very critical factors as well. Companies prefer schools where they enjoy a higher profile on campus and where they fare better vis a vis other employers and are able to attract the best students. Companies also visit schools depending on their relationship with the school and the geographical proximity of the school. another important factor is aligning organisational requirements, which means that organisations adopt different approaches to hire for different positions. While certain schools provide for the positions in strategy, corporate planning etc, there are other schools which need to be targeted to hire for operation-oriented roles.
 

“We normally work with the Top B-schools and our internal campus committee (IMC) approves the shortlist which is done on the basis of successful hires in past, cultural fitment of the new hires and all-India ranking of the college. We also take feedback from other companies and the HR fraternity.”
Ahmad Sabih Kidwai, Director HR, Schneider Electric Infrastructure

“We have a Group Management Resource (GMR) program, for which we visit the top 12, Tier 1 B-Schools across the country. The shortlist is done on the basis of various parameters such as weighted rankings through multiple survey reports, quality of students hired in the past from a particular b-school, benchmarking with competitors etc.”
Amit Das, Senior Vice President, Group HR, RPG Enterprises

“Campus placement helps us in acquiring young talent to nurture and mould them on the basis of the organization’s values and culture to enable them to become leaders of tomorrow. For campus recruits, we primarily shortlist B-schools based on nature of the job, complexity, work location and compensation budget.”
Amit Jagga, Leader, Talent Transformation Business Unit, IBM Global Process Services India

“Every B-school is known to specialise in a certain domain, sometimes more than one discipline. USP in a certain domain/functional area is an important consideration. We also consider the region from which majority of the students belong to and if it matches our regional requirements since we believe that it helps in retention.”
Nadeem Kazim, Director HR & Personnel, Exide Industries

“Several factors influence the decision of selecting B-schools which include performance of the Alumni hired in the past, recommendations by leadership and hiring managers, relationship with the B school etc.”
Raghavendra K, Vice President and Head-HR, Infosys BPO

“We take a targeted approach towards engaging and building a strong industry-academia partnership with B-schools. We use a selection criteria grid that is structured around 5-key filtering questions to shortlist B-Schools that we want to target.”
Varun Verma, Assistant Vice President-Organisation & Staffing, Genpact LLC

“We believe in building leadership pipeline for the future and in line with this strategy we have been regularly recruiting from top business schools in the country. Besides the ranking of the institute we also consider our relationship with a business school and the company’s brand perception on campus.”
Arun Sehgal, Executive VP-HR, Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare

“Organizations, like the infantry, need soldiers in varying capacities – some who can be operational or foot soldiers, some who can be tactical and some who can work on strategy and an odd guy for the grand strategy. In many ways, campus programs which can address all the above buckets are, in my mind, the ones which serve the purpose depending on the context that keeps changing.”
Prabir Jha, Senior Vice President & CHRO, Tata Motors

“Initially we shortlisted B schools based on popular rankings and our own information about good B-schools and hired students from there. Now the placement record of the college is the key decider. For example, if there have been dropouts in terms of offers accepted and not joined, performance of the recruits in the organisation etc.”
Renuka Krishna, Associate Vice President, KPIT Cummins Infosystems

“We have diversified businesses spread across the country. Depending upon the nature of business & geography, we decide the B-school to recruit candidates. While rankings do play a major role, willingness to work in a particular location in a particular industry is the deciding criteria. If these two are not considered candidates tend to leave after being trained.”
V.C. Agrawal, President HR & Management Board Member, R.P. Sanjv Goenka Group