Thursday, March 23, 2006

My final word on Placement, this year

So Sonia Gandhi has resigned from Parliament but life goes on for the rest of us. We're still grappling with mundane issues like "should I do an MBA" or not, and if I do will I really become a half-crorepati over night?

Yep I have written about it before but this is a more introspective look at the whole phenomenon. "Yeh aajkal ki IIM salaries" was the subject of my column published on rediff.com yesterday. Pasted for your reading pleasure/ displeasure below.

Yes, I am taking a shortcut method to update my blog but sometimes there are so many things to write about but not the time or peace to do it... This is one of those times. Bear with me :)

Yeh aaj kal ki IIM salaries...
- Rashmi Bansal
March 22, 2006, rediff.com

Politeness demands that one never ask a woman her age or a man his salary. Except in the month of March, when details of the number of zeros on paychecks of IIM grads becomes the stuff of dinner table conversation. And national debate.

Right after Barclays of London made a record offer of £ 105,000 to IIM Bangalore graduate Gaurav Agarwal, calculators were pulled out and another 'hail IIM' headline created. Rs 84 lakhs is a lot of money and the public is both fascinated and bewildered. What have these 20 somethings done to deserve this good fortune?

The media, which hypes these salaries in the first place, then decides it's time to introspect. 'Are IIM graduates worth their weight in gold?' asks NDTV. Seventy per cent of the viewers respond with a 'no.'

Of course, it does not really matter what the viewers think. Who is worth how much gold is really a question of demand and supply. As Amit Varma noted on India Uncut, the situation is quite like the media asking why certain authors are getting huge advances 'while so many writers starve in attics or Prithvi Theatre or wherever it's cool to hang out these days.'

He elaborates, 'What is the worth of a good or a service? Whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. The publishers who pay big advances for a writer's book are doing so because, from a commercial point of view, they see value in it. They do it with their own money, not taxpayers' funds or something. If they've made a mistake, their bottomline will suffer for it. Similarly, the companies forking up these large amounts for these IIM grads clearly see value in the men and women they're hiring.'

I couldn't have expressed it better. The companies that hire these graduates think they are worth the price paid. If they are not, the 'going rate' will fall in the years to come. Or, recruiters will look elsewhere for talent!

Then and now
Value also depends on the time, place and circumstance. Today, an IIM grad is worth much more than he/ she was just a decade ago.

The class of 1993 -- which I was part of - would be hard-pressed to recall its average salary. Such statistics never received media attention back then.

The liberalisation process had just started, our senior batch was the first to be recruited by McKinsey. But the average Andy got a Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 salary in hand with shared accommodation, if lucky, and that was considered rather good!!

Things changed when:
a) Foreign recruiters, especially Wall Street, discovered the IIMs. They started offering salaries that sounded fantastic when dollars and pounds were converted into rupees.

b) As more students with prior work experience started joining the IIMs, it reflected in the salaries and positions being offered. This year's 'top dog' at IIM-Ahmedabad is an IPS officer of the 1988 batch who is joining the RPG group as a CEO, at a compensation of Rs 34 lakhs.

Similarly, Gaurav 'Rs 84 lakhs' Agarwal, is 29 and has an IIT degree, an MS from Berkeley and two years of work experience in the US.

Given that the average starting salary for MBAs on Wall Street is $ 100,000 and expected to rise to $300,000 in five years, his $ 193,000 is justified by his past profile. And his future value to the company.

Let's face it. Management pays more than many other professions because it is seen to create wealth. And, within management, investment banking pays a hell of a lot more than marketing or HR because of its extremely direct linkage with money.

If an MBA like Gaurav is great at creating complex financial models (which is what whizkids like him are hired for), he can earn his firm millions of dollars. His efforts can be quantified -- to an almost exact degree -- in terms of additional dollars and cents earned for the firm. That's not the case in every profession.

Say, a journalist writes a great article. It's unlikely that his or her actions result in extra sales of 20,000 copies. And even if that happens, attributing success to a particular individual is not all black or white. The marketing department may say they ran a special promotion, distribution may say they pushed it on the news stands.

Of course, over a period of time, great journalists will acquire a reputation and command a price. But journalists as a whole will always be paid far less than investment bankers.

Due to this, a lot of folks who might have made great journalists end up as Vice Presidents of Blah somewhere. But that's the individual's call. If you don't believe you have it in you to be 'outstanding', you prefer to stick where the averages look better.

Hopefully, you retire by 40 and start painting and discovering your inner child. Or, you get hair weaving.

All rise
And while we're discussing the 'obscene' paypackets to a few IIM grads, it's important to note the cascading effect these packages have had on salaries in general. Average salaries this year have moved up from the Rs 5-7 lakh range to the Rs 7-9 lakh range in the top tier of B-schools. At IIM-A and C the average has almost touched 10!

Indian companies in particular have become more generous - at NMIMS this year, the biggest recruiter was the Kotak group and it gave a 30% raise in packages. Marico not only hiked salaries but ran an entire image-building campaign to convince B-school grads that it was a company with 'uncommon sense'. A shift mere pre-placement talks to the era of pre-placement television!

But while placements have been rocking, the process itself remains extremely stressful - because everyone can't get placed on Day 0 or does not wish to. An IIM student who is keen on a marketing job - the kind which does not offer headline-grabbing salaries - writes in his blog:

'At the end of the first day of placements, a television channel van came over to the campus. Those guys filmed the students with perfectly formed teeth and high grades and glorious job offers in London and Hong Kong and telecast it to homes around the nation, including my aunt's in Indore and another aunt's in Patiala. So aunts and uncles who talked to me sometime when Jesus Christ was still a kid are calling me up and deeply regretting the fact that I am jobless in spite of being at IIM.'

In fact, the chap had applied to 40 companies - 34 of which were still to visit campus at the time he wrote that lament. A couple of days later, he got a job with one of India's most respected marketing companies, but at a rupee salary. Aunts and uncles in Patiala and Indore will still be asking, "Bas, itna hi (That's it? Only so much)?"

Keeping up with the Jainses
The entire hullabaloo can be summed up in a single sentence: satisfaction with how much you earn is always relative to what your neighbour earns.

Graduate students of public health at Harvard University were asked: 'Which world would you prefer (prices remaining the same)? You get $50,000 a year and others get half that. You get $ 1,00,000 a year and others get double of that.'

A majority of people preferred the first scenario where they were relatively 'poorer' but better off than their peers.

That is why hearing about these tall salaries makes the aam junta uncomfortable. It does not matter how well you are doing, when someone is doing a lot better than you.

But then, life is a marathon. Many of us believe money isn't everything. But even if you decide to make money your number one goal, there's no telling who will actually race ahead of whom at which point in life.

Recently, I read in the papers about a batchmate who is getting a Rs 1 crore salary. He did not start his career with a high profile consultancy, foreign bank or HLL (which in its time was as sought after a job at IIMs as Lehman Brothers is today).

And yet, because he has five years of experience in a sector that is currently booming, he is extremely valuable. So much so that when a rival tried to 'steal him away', his current employer practically doubled his salary without batting an eyelid.

And oh, statistics are not against the Underdog either. A recent issue of Businessweek magazine asks the question: 'Is the MBA overrated?' The magazine studied the five highest-paid executives at each of the S & P 100 companies in 2004 and found that only one out of three had an MBA. Of the MBAs, only half went to top 10 ranked B-schools.

To sum up, an elite MBA is like membership of an exclusive golf club. It may, however, be the caddy who ultimately becomes a world champion.

And this just came in...
A report in Adage.com says "MBAs may be a marketing liability"...

The study used scanner and panel data from VNU’s ACNielsen to show marketers from companies with significant market-share gains are far less likely to have M.B.A.s than those from companies posting significant share losses.

The M.B.A. factor wasn’t the only difference, but it was perhaps the most striking one between winners and losers among the companies, which included General Mills, Kraft Foods, Nestle, Pfizer, Clorox Co., Reckitt Benckiser, Energizer, Alberto Culver Co., Hasbro, Cadbury Schweppes, Kodak and Dunkin’ Donuts.


Hmm. Wonder whether that holds true for India as well. Someone should conduct a study, 'cause literally thousands of MBAs are joining the marketing arm of companies in finance, insurance, retail. But ultimately they are the foot soldiers who execute the strategy crafted by the 'brand managers' and 'marketing managers' who are usually from the elite MBA schools.

Of course, with time more and more of these MBAs are gravitating to other functions. At IIM B only 15% of the batch was placed in marketing. Whereas investment banking attracted 26% of the students and finance 16%.

Speaking of which, here's something I wrote for Businessworld on Why Investment Bankers Get Paid So Much. As this post is already too long, here's the link (you can access it free after registering, if based in India).

And yeah, if you're going to leave messages about 'why do you write about IIMs so much' what I'd like to know is - why have you been reading so far??

20 comments:

  1. everything fine.
    love your writing.
    no complaints about excessive MBA dosage.
    But the BWorld thing isn't free !!!

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  2. I have always wondered.. among all these success stories of IIMs, are there people who lose out too ? by lose out, i mean big time. Coz i know of IITians who dont do so well in life even though they are from IITs.. i was wondering if its the same for IIMs..

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  3. phoenix: all of us are kind of loosers because we all are wannabes and not something we would have been if we would have thought independently. And people in IITs and IIMs are also kind of loosers but they are just luckier. Looser or winner boiles down to mostly how much money one makes and I know of lot of great people in their fields who died poor.
    And I am pretty sure there must be people who passed from iims, say some years back when indian economy was slow, then there must have been ppl left jobless.

    Ms Bansal, nice article: nice references, nice statistics, impartial stand, overall a treat to the reader.

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  4. The salaries that the MBA graduates from the top B-schools are getting have a very high probability of being justified. It is difficult to explain any other motive behind the people who hire a person at USD 193,000 per year. They cannot be so stupid (though, that's not a claim). But, if past is anything to go by, the MBAs do not have even the remotest chance of becoming the richest men in the world.

    The richest men in the world have almost always been entrepreneurs. I personally cannot think of an example that proves contrary. And it is ultimately these entrepreneurs that hire the B-school blood.

    When we hear of the fortune made by the MBA graduates, the feeling is almost always that of awe and jealousy, the latter probably being stronger. But when we hear of the fortune made by entrepreneurs, the feeling is almost always that of awe and respect, the latter probably again being stronger. These emotions are easy to understand.

    Most people, in an MBA, see a guy that is younger than them and has earned more than they have earned during their entire lifetimes by doing a 2 year course. Hence the jealousy. While the entrepreneur has toiled incessantly over decades to build a fortune only a few others can parallel. Hence the respect.

    Though both of them are quite necessary for the progress of the society as a whole, if I were to vote, I would vote in the favour of entrepreneurs. But not because of emotional reasons. But because the reason that they are the people who hold the power to transform an entire nation and probably the world. It is only through their vision that the world progresses, MBAs are simply helpers.

    For most of the youth, an MBA has become a license of earning easy money (easy relative to earning money by an entrepreneur) by completing a tough 2 year course. Their career path ends at an MBA, evident from the answer to the question, "What is your goal in life?" and pat comes the reply, "I want to be an MBA".

    I would like to see MBA as a course that is undertaken for building technical knowledge, management knowledge, and network; to realise the ultimate goal of your life that you have decided prior to doing an MBA. Thus, MBA, according to me, is a one of the earlier sections of the highway that I will travel to reach my destination.

    PS: Sorry for a comment as long as the post.

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  5. Hello Rashmi, nice article. I read it on rediff yesterday or day before.

    Forget the aam janta like us, I wonder what are Gaurav Agarwals classmates thinking. After reading Rishits posts, I am reminded of my own placement experiences in college (No, I am not an MBA, just an engineer). Gauravs classmates would be more jealous of him rather than us. Many would be thinking "Hey, I scored better than him, and I am going to sell sabuns in gaon". "Yaar, uski kismat". "Yaar, ************ aadmi hai , pata nahi kaise ho gaya uska".

    When I and some other guys were placed amongst the first companies in the campus, (placement scene was bad that year) we faced similar comments. Friends turned to foes. They even went to the extent of comparing girlfriends (hey , my girlfriend is slimmer, more beautiful, richer, anydamnthing than yours). Lucky me, I did not have a girlfriend.

    Most of the cooperation stopped. No sharing notes, no clearing doubts, no group study etc.

    Well stuff happens.

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  6. Excellent article Rashmi and an equally thought provoking comment by Rishit. I totally agree with the immensely distinguishing emotional reactions towards an MBA and an entrepreneur. Unfortunately as Rashmi points out the basic generic way of measuring someone's success or failure in our society (any society for that matter) is how many more zeros, one has been able to add to ones earnings over a period of time. And an MBA is a quick shot way of doing that.

    A few years ago, a newspaper carried out an interesting survey of yester-years merit rankers in SSC, HSC and Graduation Examinations. The outcome was as predictable as the outcome of the 3rd India England test match on day 5: everyone knew it but pretended to look otherwise. Most of the toppers and merit rankers where in noble professions like doctors, engineers, some had gone on to become MBAs as well. During the time of their glory, they were all across the media about their academic success. Surely they would be considered successful even now (monetarily), but what about that average Joe in school or college who goes on to become a Ford, a Gandhi, a Keller, a Bradman!

    So are we placing our bets too early?

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  7. don't know about MBA's from other colleges but those from IIMs and a few other good institutes like XLRI are definitely worth what they are being paid.

    They are fit to be good managers and smart enough to be hired by global firms who are ready to pay them anything.

    These hikes in salaries just reflect the brand IIM.

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  8. Nice read. Today I was talking to my boss. He is a complete techie (no MBA). He has excelled in his profession and have a good personality and attitude to match. We discussed about what are the benefits of being an IIT and IIM. As the common talk, he expected all IITian should go in research and do PhD. Why the hell, people don't expect IITian to be normal humans. For IIM, his short answer was that being from good institute doesn't mean you are good.
    No wonder, we worship Sachin Tendulkar and when he is down, we show no mercy. We don't leave any opportunity of criticising, humiliating and stabing our own fellows, who are doing great. It may be our own fears or insecurity which lead us first to push a great man to GODhood and then pulling him down like a drag.
    Amit's quotes are most appropriate, more rational. Why the hell people are cribbing when someone is having a good time. It's more like, people hate to watch, their neighbours grow.

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  9. and to answer ur last question, boz i love to read ur blog and not bcoz...

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  10. I totally agree with your views.

    Here is a totally different take on To be or not to be MBA
    Lazy Blogger

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  12. Much better article than the last time. Rashmi, please don't feel defensive that you are writing about IIM's -- the way you ended it. I don't know about other people, but I think your niche is management studies and related areas and not commenting on movies like Brokeback mountain. I totally agree to your point -- although, you just rephrased completely whatever Amit Varma said on his blog. Anything is worth only whatever somebody is wiilling to pay for it; and no matter how much any body makes, they are only happy only when they are content. There is a mistake in the study you quoted about the graduate students at Harvard, though. It's not a get $50,000 or $1M scenario. It was either get $50,000 where somebody else got half(or somewhere close) or $100,000 where somebody got a double that. And it's not a majority that chose the first one, but a fairly equal split. But I see your point, you are only as comfortable as you can feel. Please read the following article on Cafe Hayek, http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/03/the_persistence.html and that's what Russel Roberts says. And it's not like it's a new concept. We Indians have always been taught the same thing by our elders: be happy with whatever we got.

    Hope you keep posting about trends in India. You do a smashing good job when you stick to that.

    ReplyDelete
  13. i have been following your columns since this article:
    http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2005/apr/11rashmi.htm

    This is probably when you started writing for rediff may be..Today, I got hold of your blog URL too. My take, the brand IIM is now in everyone's good books, and globalisation is inevitably responsible for it...

    ReplyDelete
  14. Its a very well written article. I read it first on rediff. All this discussion on salaries should end. Its just a statistic and should remain so. You are right when you say that its the recruitors decision, after all its not taxpayers money.

    I was sulking and had resolved not to comment anymore after your post on IIM C, but you have me back now! :P

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  15. Forget IIM placements; you have me worried more for our beloved Sonia-G's placement.
    Now that she has officially resigned, wouldn't this be the golden chance to dispatch her as India's permanent envoy to Italy?!
    Would do a world of good toward flooding the Indian market place with Prada, Fendi, Marni, Etro & Missoni.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi Rashmi,
    I asked many friends about ibanking but no one could make me understand about it,your article in Business World cleared all my doubts, so dont drop this issue(IIM salaries and all), this helps many take important decisions regarding their career choices

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  17. Hello Rashmi,

    Heard a rumour about an IIMA guy getting more than this IIMB chap Gaurav Agarwal this year. But its not being publicised.
    Is that true.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hmm...this is specifically in reply to the post 'in the shadows'. I'm from IIMB, a classmate of Gaurav Aggarwal. One thing that has to be understood is that he is a topper from IITK, has a masters degree from UC Berkely, has work-ex of close to 3 years and is the topper at IIMB. He has an extraordinary profile and is certianly an outlier. And we think he desrved it - his profile and abilities r such. So atleast in that regard, there is no such jealousy.

    But then,with the rest of us, there will always be such feelings. It happens, whether in engineering college or in B school...:)

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  19. hey very enlightening matter.
    reflects the IIM blood

    ReplyDelete

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