I had the opportunity to visit one of the IIM campuses last month. I asked the first year pgp students how much of digital marketing was being taught in their Marketing program. I noticed my question made them a tad uncomfortable. The same question when posed to a recent graduate from a top IIM revealed a similar response.
To my surprise, the digital marketing coverage was either not present in sufficient depth or not treated well enough to leave an impact. If I were to visit the the campus for recruitment, summer or final, I probably wouldn't be interested in marketing folks if they didnt understand the basics of paid search advertising, social media marketing, seo, analytics and the likes. In fact, unless the candidate is unable to engage in a reasonable conversation about designing ad campaigns, analyzing advertising ROI, concept of quality scores, budgeting for CPC vs CPM or the advanced tactics of remarketing or dynamic advertising, landing page analysis or attribution models, I would be quite hesitant to hire from a top IIM. No offence meant, but my expectations are quite different.
Now have I given away the interview questions? I hope so, if some of the future IIM grads are reading this post. I would rather have our young managers nudge the institute to provide them real word inputs which are relevant for the next few years, than have them been left stranded in a quality interview.
I hope I am not being too cynical about the IIMs and their ability to stay in step with the innovative world of digital marketing.
2 comments:
IIT Kharagpur is now offering something called Micro Credits, where some practice oriented courses are taken by Professionals. I had met IIMB Team which was in Singapore last week. Had shared thought that IIM needs to make course more relevant. 2 year is too Long a time to do what is being taught at IIM. I agree with your views...
Completely agree. You would encounter similar lack of knowledge and depth in Engineering students on Agile , Devops etc Will add further it is a age old problem of the academia in India particularly not keeping pace to the industry requirements. It is alarming when you think we have aspiration of becoming the startup capitol of the world and we miss one of the key pillars for the startup success of the Silicon valley namely the Acadmia and industry connect in the form of Stanford and other univs working very closely with industry solving their issues. Infact the expectation would be the thought leadership and innovative ideas of emerging areas are developed in these institutes.
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