Much of the criticism of the MBA degree in its current form revolves around ‘soft skills‘, and how b-schools have failed to teach them to MBA students successfully. In that light, here are two examples of thoughtful communication from two b-schools, one from SIMS – Pune and another from ISB – Hyderabad that really caught my eye and begged to be featured here.

A recent Economist article termed MBAs as ‘jargon-spewing economic vandals’ and behaviour to that effect has been captured in folklore too. Much has also been written about how MBA students are poor at keeping commitments, turning up on time at appointments, not great at holding phone conversations; whether in tier-1 or in tier-2 schools. One might attribute that to pre-existent cultural quirks, but weren’t b-school admission processes supposed to filter in the better of the lot?

Anyway, here are two examples that buck the trend that we have become used to.

What four ISB Hyderabad students did after they completed a project about PaGaLGuY

Every year, MBA students from dozens of b-schools get in touch with us to base an assignment, case study or project on PaGaLGuY.com and its business model for their entrepreneurship/product development/marketing/strategy courses. Swell, because nothing makes us more happy than the knowledge of our company contributing to someone’s business learning, even if in a small way. While researching our company, the students make to us commitments of sending us the completed case study once they complete and present it to their professors. However, to this date, we haven’t seen a single assignment turn up in our mailboxes. What’s more, the students behind the project suddenly become incommunicado and stop replying to emails. We shrug it away, moving on to the next student request, resigning to the mediocre standard of communication that we have gotten so used to expecting.

When a group of ISB Hyderabad students contacted us about a similar project on PaGaLGuY a few months ago, we had no reason to think they’d be any different. But this is what we received in the morning snail-mail today.

A keychain like the above was sent to everyone that the ISB team interviewed in the PaGaLGuY HQ for the case study. It’s a smart way of maintaining industry interface at a student level and making our interaction with the students memorable. I am not sure if the above keychains are being sent by all ISB students to the companies they have interacted with for their projects, or whether this idea is institute-driven, or whether we were the only ones to be sent something like this on a personal equation. But whoever thought of it, has tried an innovative way of solving the ‘industry-interface’ problem that b-schools constantly grapple with.

The SIMS, Pune placement brochure

Ever since we started recruiting from b-schools, we started receiving large amount of placement-brochures seeking to convert us into a participating company at the placements. Most of these brochures look more or less the same, are printed on art-paper and have 30% devoted to information about the school and 70% comprising of photo-profiles of students page after page. So similar are the brochures in their content and presentation, that they have ceased to be of utility to us while deciding whether to recruit from that b-school. We can almost predict what we’re going to see in the next brochure and have become numb to the experience.

However, we were surprised to receive the following placement brochure from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies (SIMS), Pune.

(The yellow-coloured annotation in the above image is our own)

Shaped like a smart-card, it has a detachable USB drive which when plugged into a computer launched an Adobe Flash application that is the b-school’s placement brochure in an interactive format. However, it doesn’t just stop at that. In the user-interface, one can shortlist students’ profiles based on their past education and work experience using a search-filter. It has real utility and isn’t just token eye-candy. Very usable and tastefully designed, it tells me something about the stress the school lays on thoughtful communication. Though it’s been executed by an agency (SIMS students don’t seem to have coded the app themselves), but that a school should choose to try something that is innovative and a definite improvement over the jaded landscape of the ’same-old-same-old’ ought to be applauded.

One might say, that the above examples are merely cosmetic and miss the deeper aspects of communication – and I agree. But then, it’s not as if the industry is spoilt for choice when it comes to good communication from MBA students right now. Also, this article is not meant to be a case for MBA students to go on a gift-sending spree, nor is it a flat endorsement of SIMS Pune or ISB Hyderabad by PaGaLGuY. It is meant to showcase two beautiful and rare examples of what are popularly known as soft skills.