'Graduates today are doing much more than what previous batches did'

Shalini Pillay, Head of People, Performance and Culture (PPC),  KPMG, elaborates on hiring trends in leading tier-1 colleges in an email interview to Arunima Mishra
 
Q. How many graduate colleges did KPMG visit this year for campus recruitment? Is there an increase in the hiring intake over the previous year?

A. For this year's intake from premier Indian graduate colleges, KPMG in India went to close to 25 colleges. In comparison with the previous year, the increase was by more than 25 per cent. The number of hires from premier Indian graduate colleges in KPMG in India this year went up by almost 50 per cent as compared to the previous year. We expect to have more than 250 recruits from these colleges this year.

Q. How do graduates perform once they join  big companies?

A. Many graduates are doing much more than what students of previous batches had. Apart from the academic pressure which has gone up manifold, many of these students in the country's premier graduate colleges are involved in a plethora of extracurricular activities. The increase in their academic pursuits along with an uplift in their overall exposure during their graduation has improved their employability. Many of these students undertake internships during their academic breaks to gain professional exposure. While the number of these students would have increased over the past few years, their proportion is limited to the top league colleges in the country.

Q. How are they growing in their careers?  

A. It is important to note that in order to compete successfully in large organisations, graduates must keep up with the competition. If eight out of 10 of these students pursue higher education or professional qualifications such as CA, CFA, MBA etc, in most careers, the other two would feel left behind sooner or later. The students from these top colleges can be attributed with academic excellence and hard work. These attributes are considered important by most top recruiters. While the ultimate test of one's success would be based on their actual performance on the job, top recruiting organisations such as KPMG support their employees in their long-term career objectives through a variety of talent development and retention measures, including supporting continuous learning programmes which they can pursue in parallel to their careers with us.

Q. Can you detail the kind of students who opt for these jobs?

A. There is a high percentage of commerce students followed by business, economics and arts graduates. In KPMG India, we hire graduates from top undergraduate colleges in a variety of businesses which offer client facing as well as non-client facing profiles. Over 10 businesses in the firm offer students in these colleges career options that suit their career interests and skill sets. Students in these colleges can expect KPMG to offer them exciting career opportunities across all major business functions of the firm in India.

Q. What does it take to keep graduates engaged?

A. Since the newly qualified graduates who join KPMG in India would be in a professional work environment for the first time in their career, the firm understands their specific requirements. This is why the firm has a number of engagement tools to manage their expectations. These tools include robust processes around pre-boarding, induction and on-boarding, performance development with focus on coaching and mentoring, ongoing training needs assessment and implementation of learning solutions, employee engagement surveys and employee engagement activities.

Q. How are these students different from the B-school students at work?

A. Apart from the curriculum, the typical MBA programme in a top tier B-school focuses on employability and skills which are quite relevant for the recruiters. Many Indian B-school graduates from top-tier institutions possess pre-qualification work experience. Apart from this, graduates from B-schools undergo a much more formal interactions with recruiting organisations such as internships, live projects, guest lectures etc. While the graduate colleges mainly offer bachelor's programmes, B-schools offer post-graduate or equivalent qualifications. Due to the combination of these factors, there is a difference in the overall bracket of career opportunities which top quality students from tier-1 B-schools would have as options vis-a-vis tier-1 graduate colleges. However, every year stories of graduates receiving top offers depict that possibly the top end of the students in graduate colleges are in some way comparable to a certain level of students in top B-schools.