the 'game plan' to recruit B school graduates - Youth in india

due to inscreasing number of B school graduates, the companies are developing competitive mode to select the best, resulting another stressful environment for the students that they dream to avoid by choosing MBA (management) courses thinking that the path will be less competitive, in a country of billions.

here's an article :

Students graduating from business schools know the summer vacation that follows is anything but a holiday. It is placement season, when they must gear up to meet prospective employers. And companies visiting campuses are increasingly using competitions to recruit the best among them.
Take Mahindra & Mahindra, for instance. Since 2009, it has had a competition platform called 'War Room' which holds contests of job aspirants. These allow students with different specialisations to work on strategy solutions to real-life problems the group companies face.

"This is a very good way for us to source talent as we are able to gauge the candidates in an in-depth way," says Rajiv Dubey, HR Head at M&M. "It is not a substitute for other methods of campus recruitment but complements them."

Five of the many students who participated in last year's War Room are now part of the company's management training programme.

Vipul Manglik, 26, who pursued an MBA from Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon, has joined a management training programme at Bharti Airtel and will be assigned a permanent role in January. Manglik was a runner-up at iCreate, a competition platform organised by Airtel.

"I was offered a per-placement interview with the company after my team won. This put me a big step ahead of my batchmates," he says.

Competing alongside more than 300 teams from India's top 15 B-schools, Manglik's three-member team worked on one of four case studies assigned by Airtel. In this case too, all four studies related to actual problems faced by the company. Manglik's team had to find a way to increase Airtel's 'Green SIM' service penetration in rural areas. Through this SMS and call service intended for farmers, registered subscribers get region-wise information on pesticides, crops and how to increase farmland production.


The project was extensive and required secondary research, as well as field visits to Haryana's Rewari district, about 60 km from the MDI campus. Manglik's team observed business transactions between farmers, vendors and middlemen at the local mandis and was able to draw connections between what they saw and heard and concepts they had read about. Their final proposal involved setting up a platform to bring vendors and farmers together.

"While the competition was launched in 2009, we started awarding students the pre-placement interview offers only from last year," says Krish Shankar, Executive Director, HR, Bharti Airtel. "We selected two students in this way." Manglik was one of them.

Many other companies have joined the fray, including PepsiCo India, whose platform - named after its global CEO, India-born Indra Nooyi - is called 'Become Indra's Advisors'. This is a new, trendy means companies have found to create a brand for themselves in colleges and hire quality talent, says MDI professor Kamal Kapil.

"While such platforms have been around for more than a decade, it is only now that this trend is catching on in recruitment," he adds.

So while companies use competitions to pick and implement new ideas proposed by the students and keep an eye on the potentials, students see them as a great opportunity to network with industry professionals, gain valuable insights and, of course, get job offers. It is a win-win situation for both.


News source : Business Today. © 2012. LMIL.

Youth & Unemployment in India

Youth unemployment remains high in India, and it hasn’t been helped by the global crisis. The latest World Development Report by the World Bank says India’s youth unemployment — as a percentage of the youth work force — was 9.9% for males and 11.3% for females in 2010. In 1985, the figures were 8.3% and 8%, respectively. Youth unemployment in India, like most countries, has consistently been above the national average. But of late, the data indicate rising youth unemployment, now virtually 50% more than the national average, or total unemployment rate.
The National Sample Survey Organisation found that India’s unemployment rate fell to 6.6% in 2009-10 from 8.2% in 2004-05. The general perception is that unemployment in India is high, but the actual numbers seem reasonable. That’s because self-employment accounts for about 60% of India’s employed population.
Given the lack of viable employment opportunities, a large number of Indians opt for self-employment. And a big chunk of this includes low-paying activities like hawking magazines and flowers at traffic signals. Casual workers — who get jobs at times and remain unpaid at other times — account for 30%, while only 10% of the working population are regular employees. Given the scarcity of opportunities, higher youth unemployment shouldn’t come as a surprise.

But rising youth unemployment in a country that is expected to reap the demographic dividend is a concern. The latest NSSO survey shows there has been a drop in the labor force participation rates – as in, those who are willing to work – among the youth. Many young people are delaying their entry into the workforce, partly because they are extending their years of education. This at least is positive as it indicates a higher degree of skill formation in the young laborforce.
The desire to acquire better skills is reflected in a substantial spurt in education loans in India. Reserve Bank of India data show that outstanding educational loans (in the personal loan category) more than doubled in the past four years. And a growing number of educational loans are turning into non-performing assets, particularly in the last few years. According to the Indian Banks’ Association, education loan NPA accounted for 6% of outstanding education loans as of March 2012, sharply up from 2% in March 2008. The spurt in defaults can to a large extent be attributed to the difficult employment environment in India, especially for students looking to enter the job market as the economy slows.

The rising demand for education clearly shows that young people are looking to move away from menial and low paying work to jobs that require comparatively higher skill sets. When distinguishing between levels of literacy and youth unemployment, various NSSO surveys reveal one common thread: Unemployment is lowest among the illiterate population. That’s because this segment is more willing to work as laborers and in low paid menial jobs.  Not surprisingly, youth unemployment is the highest among young graduates, which is a clear indication of the lack of employment opportunities for educated youth.

Although India’s manufacturing and service sectors have been growing faster than agriculture for many years, they failed to wean people from agriculture at the necessary pace, leading to lopsided employment distribution. As of 2007, just over 50% of total employment in India was associated with agriculture, while industry accounted for around 20% and services 30%.

The number of people still engaged in agriculture in India doesn’t compare too favourably with its emerging market peers. To raise industry’s contribution to GDP and move the disproportionately large number of people engaged in agriculture to industry requires a greater focus on manufacturing. It also requires reforms in the labor market, greater transparency in land acquisition and realistic environmental policies, as well as availability of quality education. It would be easier to move people from agriculture to industry through appropriate skill development programs, rather than to the service sector directly.

The challenge for the government is to ensure that appropriate policies are framed and meticulously implemented to meet the future aspirations of India’s youth. The adverse impact of the global crisis sends out a strong message. India has its work cut out.

Source : http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/11/23/young-jobless-and-indian/ 

Children in India are more interested in saving the envornment- Childfund study

While the prior study by INgene (in 2008 ans 2011) among youth (17 to 23years) enlighted us that the eco friendliness is till a 'fakoconsciousness', kind a 'eco cool' but the recent study among the chindren (10- to 12-year-olds) by Childfund brought is much brighter picture.

Here's the report :

Indian children are more interested in protecting the environment from ill-effects of climate change than their counterparts the world over and are concerned about lack of proper sanitation and drinking water, according to a global survey on children's hopes and fears.

The survey on the hopes, aspirations and fears of the future generation also found out that children are "deeply concerned" about pollution and other environmental hazards, with more than a quarter of children in India wishing to make a difference through planting more trees.

The survey conducted on 6,200 (10- to 12-year-olds) children in 47 countries by ChildFund said 27 percent of Indian children, more than the global average of 22 per cent, are interested in contributing to environment by planting more saplings.

The third annual Small Voices, Big Dreams global survey, commissioned by the ChildFund Alliance and compiled by GfK Roper, found that 10- to 12-year-olds from Africa, Asia and the Americas put an overwhelming emphasis on their schooling, have lofty aspirations for their future and have personally experienced such natural disasters as drought, flood or fire.

"While one-third of children around the world cited pollution as the environmental problem they worry most about, 21 percent Indian kids said lack of sanitation worries them the most, followed by pollution (17 percent), lack of drinking water (14 percent) and deforestation (11 percent)," said the survey.

 “The Small Voices, Big Dreams survey is an ambitious, comprehensive undertaking, carried out largely on a one-on-one basis with children in literally every corner of the globe,” said Anne Lynam Goddard, president and CEO of ChildFund International, which is a member of the Alliance. “Although often overlooked and discounted, theirs are important voices. Their perspectives not only help validate the work we are doing on a community level, but also guide us in ways that can enhance our capacity to help improve the lives of children in a self-sustaining way. While this survey is global in nature, the findings provide value on a very human level.” This year, children were surveyed about their hopes, dreams and fears, as well as their thoughts on the environment.

Dola Mohapatra, National Director of ChildFund India, said the results suggest that Indian children are not very happy with the environment which they have inherited from us.

Consistent with their emphasis on education, a majority of children in developing countries, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, responded with professions that require a college education, with doctor (27%) and teacher (24%) as the top answers.

For the first time, this year's survey included some questions related to the environment. While the survey found that at least one in three children from developing countries has experienced drought (40%), flood (33%) or forest/bush fire (30%), their biggest ecological concern was not a natural disaster but the growing threat of pollution to the environment. One in four children (26%) cited various forms of pollution as the environmental problem they worry about most, edging natural disasters, named by 23 percent of children in developing countries. One in three children (33%) in developed countries singled out pollution as their most-pressing environmental concern.

When asked what one thing they would do to change the environment around their community, 28 percent of children in developing nations said they would plant more trees and build more parks. A similar number (29%) of children in developed countries said their top priority would be to reduce or stop littering.
As for their fears, the top answer among children in both developing (29%) and developed (21%) countries was the same: animals.

News Source : http://www.childfund.org