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.