Tuesday, July 03, 2007

A Summer Project is NOT Agent Recruitment Project

I'm shocked at the way number of B-Schools in India are forcing their Marketing Management students to appear for campus interviews - for Final Placements as well as for Summer Training.
For Summer Training, private Insurance sector companies are awarding projects which involve appointment of agents for selling insurance products. The students are being paid a commission for the number of agents they manage to recruit. They are being threatened that if they do not appoint a bare minimum number of agents, they may not get their "certificate of satisfactory completion" from the company at all. Once these students pass out the following year, companies marketing branded products may not touch them with a barge pole. What these students do in the name of Summer Project for a period of 6 to 8 weeks is not a project at all.
Final year MBA Marketing students (with a background in Engineering) have been offered final placements (during campus interviews in February) in insurance companies with the job profile remaining the same as that of Summer Training. The insurance companies issue "Letters of Offer" to practically every individual who appear for the interview. What is worse is that, thereafter, the students are not even allowed to appear for other campus interviews by the college authorities between February and June.
These final year students were not even informed about their job content, i.e. on what they were expected to do on joining the company. On completion of their MBA in June - July they have also realized that the remuneration promised to them has a very very very high component of variable pay (in the form of incentives). No wonders there's a large number of demotivated fresh and young MBAs in the marketplace.
Will someone counsel these youngsters properly, please? I'm keen to hear from youngsters incidents which are very similar to these.