Not the best of the brains
Dr Yasho V Verma of LG on his preference for smaller institutes

LG Electronics has been visiting campuses for selection of management graduates and masters in engineering from MBA and engineering institutes. Initially, when we started our operations in India, we visited some of the leading institutions with an idea to get the best of the brains in the field. The experience with leading institutes was somewhat poor. The mindset of the students of such institutes is quite contrary to the expectations of a manufacturing company. Unlike service sector in India, the manufacturing sector has to compete with the low-cost producers of products led by China and other Asean nations. The service sector in India, led by the IT sector, is a low-cost service provider in comparison to its competitors, which are mainly in the Western countries. As a result the paradigm in a manufacturing organisation is completely different from that of a service sector organisation.

The leading institutes have their brand value, which in some ways inculcates a feeling of one-upmanship. The expectation of passouts from such institutions is to get into a cozy, money spinning, five-day consulting job, where there is no direct responsibility and accountability for any failure. Even if they are not able to get into a consulting job, the next best alternative would be to get into a service sector job where they would be required to deal with all white collared people and where the compensation structure would be at a higher pedestal. Manufacturing is a difficult ballgame, where the person is required to toil either on the shopfloor or in the open market, where the competition is very high and as such drives away the passouts from such leading institutes.

As the market value of the passouts from these institutions is high, they do not stick to an organisation for long and jump the organisations too frequently just for the sake of making some fast buck and some fast career moves. The whole mindset of sticking to an organisation to accomplish some targets/goals/milestones and learn to implement in a difficult environment is missing. In other words, passion of doing something unique and difficult is less. Another interesting phenomenon has been observed that as brand value of these institutions is high, the passouts try to look for an organisation of equivalent brand value and get associated if it matches with the individual requirement.

Personally I feel that the learning in a manufacturing organisation is always higher because the issues involved are more complex. But as the implementation is difficult, it is best to go to a middle-level institute and get the best of the talent. When we go for campus recruitment to these institutions we just check the basic knowledge level and pay more emphasis on the psychological makeup of the person. We try to assess whether he would be a long-term team player and whether he has the requisite leadership skills to mature into a future leader or not. Apart from academics we also look into the extent of involvement of individuals into extra-curricular activities. People with high scores in academics need not necessarily be good in an organisational setup.

Our observation has been that students from middle level institutes are more sincere and committed and have an aptitude for sticking to an organisation and align their mindset to achieve the organisational goals. The moment they join an organisation with a good brand value, their own market value and social status goes up. As a result of this they tend to mould themselves in the organisational culture and strive hard to achieve the goals.

In order to make sure that their students do well in organisations, some of the institutes try to inculcate a mindset of target orientation, high sense of achievement motivation, passion for excellence, high EQ level apart from leadership and team working skills. These mindsets are important and useful, but apart from this the institutes need to build a mindset of learning and implementation. With learning we do not only mean academic learning, but cultural learning as well. The ability to survive and thrive in various cultural setups will give an added advantage in the long run. This is all the more important, as with the globalisation the world has become a small place, where people from different back grounds and culture have to work together and grow.

— Dr Verma is director (HR & MS), LG Electronics India Pvt Ltd