Small Town Troubles

A WEST INDIA-BASED business house was looking for an executive assistant for its CEO. The group had a business school as well. On the advice of Management Consultant and Trainer Rajiv Khurana, the CEO invited 12 shortlisted students. Khurana, along with the CEO, interviewed them, but their performance was so bad that all interviews were done within 25 minutes. Needless to say, no one was selected. “It stumped me. When they could not hire students from their own institute, how did they expect them to get placed elsewhere?” says Khurana

In another incident, the management of one of the institutes from a small town requested Khurana to interview the ‘brightest’ MBA graduate for the position of training and placement coordinator at an educational institution. “I asked her to write a persuasive note in 30 minutes inviting company HRs to visit the institute for placements. She took more than an hour and all she could deliver was copy-paste stuff from the brochure,” recalls Khurana.

In fact, there are institutes in small