10 Career & Business Life THE ECONOMIC TIMES | MUMBAI | TUESDAY | 17 NOVEMBER 2015

Case Library initiated by Top Cos Flock to Colleges for The Economic Times SWACHH BHARAT ABHIYAN WAYS Placement With Big Salaries Leading to Healthier TO tional director, human resources, Life and Prosperity Varuni Khosla & Students Grab Jobs With Top Cos EY. “Collaboration, entrepreneurial On October 2, 2014, Prime Minister Under the Corporate Social Prachi Verma Dadhwal spirit, innovation and taking owner- SHRI RAM COLLEGE LADY SHRI RAM HINDU COLLEGE ship to create impact are traits that Narendra Modi officially launched Responsibility (CSR) Plans, PSUs New Delhi: It’s a bumper place- OF COMMERCE COLLEGE FOR WOMEN DELHI UNIVERSITY we encourage in our people.” the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) under Power, Coal and Renewable ment season at India’s top under- DELHI UNIVERSITY DELHI UNIVERSITY Startups are offering average an- at Rajpath, New Delhi, by taking up Energy Ministries are to build IDinsight has offered `. graduate colleges, reflecting a Deutsche Bank is Parthenon-EY reigns the highest package of nual salaries of 4-5 lakh at SRCC the broom to clean a road. 50,000 toilets in schools country- Let Go of Your more buoyant jobs market than in one of the top with an offer of `11 lakh, Bain & Co has in Delhi. The opportunities are be- SBA was launched with eight core wide by August 2015. the last few years. The first quarter recruiters at about offered `10 lakh, ing eagerly grasped. objectives. The principal objective The Confederation of Indian of the undergraduate placement `29 lakh ` “Startups come with a promise of ` McKinsey 8.1 lakh is to ensure a healthy life for Indian Industry (CII) is to help build 10,000 Past Best season has just concluded and 15.5 lakh per year. Cos that have making employees partners with- some of the top recruiters in the per year so far. This hired students this year in a few years. That growth oppor- citizens and to improve India’s sem- toilets in schools countrywide by Performers country have started to flock to Del- figure is expected to include Parthenon-EY, tunity isn’t there with some of the blance globally. 2016 at a cost of Rs 200 crore to rise if Parthenon- McKinsey and Co., hi University and other campuses big-wigs in the business and that's SBA has specific goals Rs 500 crore using funds A question company heads of- EY/Goldman Sachs Boston Consulting to offer students annual packages come on board Group, Kepler Cannon, why students lean towards them,” aimed at the rural as well from private companies. ten grapple with is why anyone `. of as much as 29 lakh. Bain Capability Center, said Nitin Gupta, student place- as urban areas. Gramin The estimated cost of would want to fire a worker who At Lady Shri Ram College for HANS RAJ COLLEGE Samsung, DE Shaw, EY, ment coordinator at SRCC. SBA, i.e., for the rural SBA is Rs 1.96 lakh crore. was a good performer. Well, as a Women (LSR), Shri Ram College of DELHI UNIVERSITY Deloitte, KPMG, Groupon Vmock, a virtual recruiting eco- company goes through the stag- Commerce (SRCC) and other top system, has been seeking to recruit areas has a target of 11 SBA has to achieve its Bain & Co. has LOYOLA COLLEGE CHENNAI crore household latrines ultimate goal by 2019, es of incubation, growth, matu- Delhi colleges, placements have be- hired students at analysts and content developers at rity and decline, employees tend gun early, and salary packages are Hindu College. Bluegape is hiring to be installed in vil- the 150 birth anniversary ` Nearbuy (Groupon India) has Ashok Kurtkoti to reach a stage when they stop higher than ever. Loyola College, 14 lakh 101 offered the highest salary of for content leads and marketing lages by 2019. The central of Mahatma Gandhi, to per year being efficient. So what do you Chennai, has had its “best place- students have ` ` managers. These jobs are open to agency for the Gramin ensure a clean and green ment year,” while Christ University been placed in 7 lakh, DE Shaw 4.8 lakh all undergraduate disciplines. do when the same happens to ` SBA is the Drinking Water and India (every city and village). in Bengaluru is witnessing a rush the last three & Facebook 5 lakh for under- Square Yards Consulting, a real your best employees, especially from financial services companies. months graduate & post-graduate students estate advisory, is planning to hire Sanitary Ministry. The intentions undoubtedly are after your initial attempts to For the placement cell at SRCC in around 500 people in the next year The Urban SBA has a target to remarkable. However, the expected change the situation have failed. Delhi, the season began in August and is primarily looking at cam- build 1 crore household toilets, results of SBA and its apt imple- Varuni Khosla finds out. and one round is already over with It’s been a great year for place- cluded in October and 101 students puses including undergraduate 2.5 lakh community toilets, mentation remains a significant more than 200 students getting ments, said Kanika K Ahuja, con- have been placed,” Regis said. “This colleges for several new positions 2.6 lakh public toilets and solid challenge. jobs at Deutsche Bank, McKinsey, vener of the placement cell at LSR. is certainly the best year when it such as sales and marketing execu- Regular Reviews waste management. The central 1 AT Kearney, EY, Grand Thornton “The placements this year have comes to placements and this is the tives. In addition, the company is agency for Urban SBA is the Urban Dr ASHOK KURTKOTI, MIT School of Regular performance reviews and others. The college placement been phenomenal and definitely a highest ever in this period.” planning to get recruits for its of- Business, Pune must take place to evaluate the cell is also in talks with Goldman major leap from our performance Bengaluru’s Christ University is fices in Dubai, Qatar, London, Sin- Development and Housing Ministry. difficulties that employees Sachs and Parthenon-EY to hire last year,” she said. “By the end of expecting more startups to ap- gapore, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. face as the company grows. talent. Last year, of the approxi- just the first placement season, we proach its students, given that the “We are also opening offices in To- SELF-MANAGED TEAMS mate 500 students at SRCC, nearly have managed to beat our own re- city is a hub for the sector, said a ronto, Sydney and South Africa. 350 were placed. cord of the highest package from placement official. Another trend The talent from undergraduate 2 Be Transparent At LSR, the season has just begun last year (`. 18 lakh) to this season’s is of leading financial services colleges is energetic and passion- and 65 of the 200 students who highest placement of `. 29 lakh (al- companies hiring more students ate and would be able to under- Transforming Commitment to Transparency earns trust. Have signed up for placements have al- so highest in the University of Del- this year than in the last one. stand our international clientèle’s an open discussion with the em- ready got jobs. In the mix are also hi). This is surely one of the best “Some of the top firms (in terms of needs,” said Vivek Agarwal, prin- Growth and Empowerment ployee on the reasons for letting startups such as Oyo Rooms, Car- years we have had.” number of offers made) include EY, cipal partner at Square Yards. Around 2001, Dr Reddy’s The recruits seized the opportu- the person go. It is important to Dekho, Vmock and BlueGape. Car- The placement season has been KPMG, Goldman Sachs, Wipro Tech- Startup Roder, formerly Insta- Laboratories’, well known in the nity to work for a big company and Dekho is looking to hire as many as the best one for Chennai’s Loyola nologies, L&T Infotech etc.,” the per- Cab, is eyeing undergraduate col- ensure that employees under- pharmaceutical industry world- get fully paid college education stand that the organisation has 150 students across undergraduate College in years. Commerce, arts son said. Compensation packages leges across the country to ramp up `. `. wide, was trying to understand and free accommodation in the evolved and that while they campuses in India with an empha- and science students have got bet- are up to 3.5 lakh from 2.75 lakh in its headcount for roles in sales, how the human potential in the bargain. Independence, confidence were instrumental in getting the sis on Delhi University. ter placement offers than in previ- the case of one company. marketing and operations. “We have no specific proclivity ous years. Many others at Loyola EY’s practice is to pick people “We would also be keen to have organisation needs to be aligned and ability to learn, ownership and organisation to the current stage, and are looking to hire from all are waiting for core companies, es- young and groom them to become them to head city or region oper- to deliver results. After in-depth accountability without having to their skill sets may no longer be graduate backgrounds,” said pecially in subjects such as statis- future leaders. ations as we expand to other ci- reviews, the Self-Managed Team always turn to their supervisors for aligned to the current require- Umang Kumar, president, CarDek- tics, economics and life sciences “We hire graduates from leading ties,” said Siddhant Matre, cofoun- (SMT) concept was adopted. The directions drove confidence in the ments of the organisation. ho, and CEO, Gaadi.com. “Even hu- etc, said Chithra Regis, director of colleges across the country for their der of Roder. Now present in the manities works for us as we are training and placement. individual differences/views and Delhi National Capital Region, the idea was to increase efficiency in professionals and satisfaction from Incentive Plans looking to hire smart young people “We began the placement for this passion that they bring to the orga- company is looking to expand to 10 manufacturing by reducing hier- their work. 3 for analyst roles.” academic year in August and con- nisation,” said Sandeep Kohli, na- other cities. archy in the organisation; build an SMTs inculcated a sense of owner- This is especially helpful in start- organisation without the pitfalls of ship among its members. The SMT ups where a large part of the conventional structure; and serve programme created individuals compensation is based on per- as a benchmark in terms who were assets not formance. Your best performers of speed, response to cus- only to the company but would have earned very well at Bye Bye Email, Hello Productivity tomer needs and overall also to the healthcare one time. Now as their perform- efficiency. The concept eco-system as a whole. It ance drops, their pay will too, being new at that point created an organisation and they will start to feel de- the effort required for developing a market strategy on the back of in- team,” he says. Innovative ap- of time, the company had with fewer hierarchies motivated and will look out for Priyanka.Sangani project has gone down by 12%. 1.3 teractions and learnings that hap- proaches to drive employee traffic @timesgroup.com very few precedents, Agna Fernandez and ensured that those better paying jobs. million hours of unproductive pened as employees started collab- also helps. In the early days of time (per year) that was spent on orating online. “Employees on launching Unmail, Intellect start- especially in pharma responsible for on-ground Pune: WhenFrench company Atos email has been freed up towards field were able to share feedback on ed updating the IPL scores on the industry, and required tremendous execution also remained connected 4 ‘Counsel to declared a few years ago that it productive work across 12,000 em- the go, which would earlier take platform to prompt people to spend efforts. with the purpose of the organisa- Leave’ Policy wanted to bring down its internal ployees,” says Shashi Mohan, CTO them 5-10 days after a campaign,” more time there instead of logging A core team was formed and tion. The training culture of SMT email use to zero by using an enter- & CIO, Intellect Design Arena. To says Lall. onto another news portal. an external consultancy was programme introduced an innate, A number of companies follow prise social network (ESN), most make sure that employees actually At Intellect, the onboarding proc- However, most organisations roped in to study the SMT con- patient-centric perspective in them. an HR policy of ‘up or out’, people didn’t think it would work. use this platform and not email, ess has shrunk from eight weeks to maintain that internal emails can cept implemented at DuPont and After 18 months, they had very which means that each posi- However, two years into the move, a 74% of the 4,000 Intellect employ- two, and Mohan says that attrition never be done away with complete- Carborundum Universal. few doubts in their minds. Although tion comes with a tenure. Once Gartner study found that the com- ees don’t even have an email id. has dropped by close to 30%, in ly. A key reason here is privacy and pany’s earnings per share went up “I’m at a senior level so I have an large part because of the options accountability. With employees dis- SMTs are empowered, multi- the SMT method of working had passed, each employee is eval- by over 50% and admin costs went email account but when I have to available to look for alternate roles cussing strategy over instant mess- skilled with operational decision- yielded results beyond measure, uated and either taken to the down to 10% from 13%. Though not communicate with my team, I across the organisation through enger and chat, it can become diffi- making authority. The SMT concept the question now was – along with next level or is given the coun- all of it may be linked with the re- don’t have a choice but to use this the ESN. At IBM, the behaviour cult to pin responsibility if things was started initially in 2002 at organisational growth, is individual sel to leave the organisation. ducing in internal email, there is a platform,” says Mohan. change is driven from the top, says go wrong. VC Gopalratnam, Presi- Yanam, as an experimental batch (professional and personal) benefit definite correlation. Microsoft has a whole suite of Gaurav Sharma, Director - Social dent, IT and CIO - APJ&C, Chief of Closer home, Intellect Design products which it uses internally Solutions, Smarter Workforce & Strategy, Planning & Operations, and later in Baddi. Through a pro- necessary to obtain employee sup- 5 Extend Support Arena, a subsidiary of Polaris Fi- as well as offers clients. “Enter- Internet of Things, IBM India/ Cisco, points out, “In cases where cess of responsible empowerment, port for change initiatives. This was your star performer at nancial Technologies has been us- prise social describes a new way of South Asia. “The ‘Personal Social documentation is needed, email economically disadvantaged youth, Dr AGNA FERNANDEZ, Associate one stage. Let the employee ing its ESN Unmail (earlier Octo- working that taps into the power of Dashboard’ gives individual and other forms of communication from locations around their manu- pus) for over two years. “The human networks,” says Alok Lall, scores across areas and there is al- will continue to be used even as in- Professor, Siva Sivani Institute of know that you are willing to ex- facturing operations were provided biggest challenge in our organisa- Director – Apps & Services Market- so a comparison versus the depart- stant messaging and social chats Management, Hyderabad meaningful employment. tend relevant support as he tion was that all the information ing, Microsoft India. For instance, ment & organisation which builds etc. become more and more accept- searches for new opportunities. was in silos. In the last two years, Bajaj Finance modified its go-to- positive competition within the able forms of documentation.” For more insightful case studies rooted in the Indian context, log on to www.etcases.com

It is Never Too Early to Start Building ‘Adaptability is One of the Most Important Relationships: Konark Singhal Criteria for Leadership Today’

The worst mistake I made Volatility will My First Year at Work I THINK I could have taken more care of my health. I ne- Q&A happen; that’s If you are not motivated glected my sleep and ate unhealthy food, which affected the new normal. Expectations from by a bigger purpose KONARK SINGHAL my health and I still repent it. Company boards are evolving even leaders are much beyond self then you are Co-founder and managing director, more dramatically than leadership in greater today. There unlikely to be a successful MockBank The best leadership lessons I learnt this environment, according to top ex- is a wider range of leader. The leadership has THIS IS SOMETHING ecutives at Egon Zehnder, a global stakeholders. The I learnt almost inadvertently. It is never too to be value based. leader in executive search and lead- level of transparency early to start building relationships. Your current co-workers may RAJEEV VASUDEVA not be movers and shakers, but in a few years many of them will ership advisory services. In a con- and immediacy that au a ha Egon Zehnder global CEO be the who’s who of the industry. One person I worked closely versation with ET’s S my B t- leaders have to deal a har a a Va u a with in Bain was Daniel Shapero, who is now a VP at LinkedIn. t c y , CEO R jeev s dev and with today makes it a i n ri n Some others I know have launched businesses. Chairman D m e I. O’B e talk about more challenging. the changing leadership and the evolv- ing role of company boards. Excerpts: DAMIEN I. O’BRIEN My biggest innovation Chairman I WON’T CALL it innovation as much as I will call it How is the nature of leadership self-discovery. For one of my cases, I had to conduct changing in a volatile world? phone interviews with rural tractor tyre dealers in Rajeev: The task of leadership has be- Western Europe. These were cold calls to people who, in come much more difficult. It has be- formation. The ability to synthesise should have the interest of share- bers are the ones who use, what I call, many cases, did not even understand English. I was quite come much more challenging. But I and to separate the signal from the holders at heart. That’s a heart and affirmative inquiry. Board members proud of the fact that I was able to dig deep and do a first- think leadership has not caught up noise is important. It is very important mind thing rather than just a process. are often seen as obstacles — I have to rate job of these interviews and drove a lot of insights into with the change in expectations in to- to have inclusive leadership today. Board members need to be vested in get this through boards. Obviously, the western European tractor tyre market. My favourite trick day’s world. There is a mismatch be- Not only are you running teams, you the outcomes of decisions being taken board members are there to ask ques- was to get the interviewee to enlist the help of a local trans- tween what is expected of the leaders also have multiple stakeholders. CEOs by executives. The level of engage- tions, but how you ask the questions in lator to converse with me. in the volatile world, and what lead- ership was traditionally. That needs to in the past never worried about engag- ment required by the boards is much amotivating way matters. evolve as well. ing with external stakeholders. The higher now. Directors now feel much Board members need to add con- How I had fun at work last thing is what we call resilience — greater sense of responsibility. The ex- structive value. As a board member, it Details of the first job: Associate If you are not motivated by a bigger WORK ITSELF WAS fun. Being a very young company, the mood the ability to go through ups and pectations are higher and engagement is even more important to be a strong Consultant at Bain & Company in purpose beyond self then you are un- in the office was mostly jolly. Dinners, parties, weekend trips, downs, and staying focused. Volatility is deeper. collaborator because the real purpose Gurgaon likely to be a successful leader. The football, darts, off sites; the list is long. leadership has to be value based. will happen; that's the new normal. With the CEOs tenure getting shorter, of a board is to get different perspec- the board also has more responsibility tives on the table, appreciate different Are leaders failing more often? The brief I was given and what I The best friend I made on the job What traits should leaders display? for the continuity of the company. views and use that as the basis to make a Damien: Expectations from leaders did in the first 100 days at work I DEVELOPED A good relationship with a senior partner R jeev: In terms of traits, adaptability good decisions. is one of the most important criteria are much greater today. There is a What are the traits of effective MARQUEE CONSULTING FIRMS in the firm, who later became the chairman of the com- wider range of stakeholders. The level board members? Are boards getting diversity right? pany. Besides me having his counsel for difficult deci- for leadership today. Can you take on like Bain have a wonderful way of of transparency and immediacy that Damien: There are distinctive traits Rajeev: First, the question is how do sions in my life, it paid off when he became an angel investor in more challenging, complex roles? Do inducting employees. My first fort- leaders have to deal with today makes that good directors have. Collab- you define diversity? You c annot my venture. you have the potential to adapt your- night was spent in an induction programme self to new circumstances, new busi- it more challenging. oration is important. Engagement have an e ffective board if you don’t around the board table is important. have the diversity o f perspective. in Singapore. The induction was like a mini- ness challenges to take on new roles? How has the role of boards evolved How I managed my work-life balance Insight is very important. You have to We are not necessarily getting that MBA. I got to spend time with senior busi- The second characteristic is curiosity, in such an environment? AT THAT STAGE make sense of massive data, see pat- right. Again, we have a long way to ness leaders from the APAC region who of life, work-life balance did not quite mat- which is all about being open to new Damien: The notion of governance has terns. Boards function best when you go in terms of gender diversity. In used to frequent the Singapore office. After ter. Work was fun and there wasn’t much to do outside work, ideas, constantly learning not just evolved very significantly. have low ego individuals who work to- Indian boards, we are not thinking the training, I was given real customer cas- anyway. I used to stay with a close friend and we used to hang out after about industry or environment, but al- Twenty years ago, there was a sense wards the benefit of the organisation. hard e nough in terms of diversity es to handle. I think my first two cases were hours and on weekends discussing everything under the sun. so about self. of good governance being a matter of Boards need individuals who brace di- of perspective and views. It’s for a global food major and for a global in- The other aspect is insight. Today, having a good process. Today, there is (As told to Varuni Khosla) versity and are inclusive. changing, but I don’t think it’s surance major, respectively. leaders are being bombarded with in- recognition that boards genuinely Rajeev: Really effective board mem- changing fast e nough.