My Goal Before, During and After MBA

My pre-MBA life revolved around software, dollar salary and complaints. As you might have guessed, I was yet another software engineer working on legacy mainframe earning the big dollars for my firm and pocketing some in return. On one hand, there was never a moment in my work life that passed without cribbing (mostly about how hard I am working). On the other hand, there were these good things in life like onsite opportunity, great appraisals with least amount of effort and promotions in quick succession. However, there was a void in life. This was due to the feeling that I was a just a cog in the giant wheel. I wanted to change that and somehow, without rhyme or reason, MBA seemed to be the solution. Passion for management was the last thing that dragged me into it. The most important thing that suck like a quick sand was the news of big fat pay checks for MBA grads. All hell broke loose when I started writing my essays. Let me be honest. I gave up on them twice. Solely because of bschool-admit kind of friends, I could complete the third time. The first tough question was to fit my decision to do a MBA to my past experience. I yarned stories like spirit-of-management, become-a-leader-like-Narayana-Murthy but lost focus on the real reason which was to create visible impact in an organization. The tougher question was to answer where I wanted to be after MBA. To start with, I had no clue. I would have been happy with hefty salary from any company. I was even ready to 'shovel shit in Louisiana'. The more I researched, the more I knew. The more I spoke, the more it became clear. So, the goal I came up with during my application process was "To be a part of a small IT organization where I could create visible impact ".

On the first day at bschool, my goal statement went for a toss. I was interacting with students from various backgrounds and was stunned with the appetite of risk taking. People sold lucrative businesses and gave up plumb positions to do a MBA. I thought I was shooting a low lying fruit by aiming to go back to IT. After a week, when an alumnus friend asked me if I was clear on where I wanted to go, my answer was a thoughtful yes. I will either get into Management Consulting or IT consulting. My backup is I-banking and maybe Marketing in a top FMCG company!!! He nudged me to say that I have missed Private Equity and Pharma!!! It was then I realized that the peer pressure caught on to me. As the courses zoomed by, I was stretching myself preparing for Management Consulting jobs. As I spoke to more of my Alumni in consulting jobs, the more I was sure that I did not want to waste my youth slogging my arss off. However, the peer pressure kept me on my toes to prepare for consulting jobs until I met a placement consultant. He discussed with me about my aims and aspirations. He reminded me of my goal before I joined the MBA program. He made me cognizant of my family commitments, inner desires and feelings. This was when I gave up the peer pressure to restate my goal and thankfully just before the placement session. " To be a part of Tier-II IT services organization located in my home town offering the position of a Consultant with a pay package greater than x lakhs per annum".

In the first week of my job, I could see eyes drool over me when my listeners heard of my alma mater. I cherished the feeling to the greatest extent. Unfortunately, this was short lived. As weeks passed by, reality stuck me. The zeal and enthusiasm to implement the bschool concepts took a back seat. The zest to do something new met with Reluctant Resistance – 'the idea is good but requires a lot of change management' kind of an answer. Again I started doing what I always did in times of confusion. I spoke to my alumni and seniors at work who changed my perspective to my post MBA life. They stressed on establishing one self before proceeding with phenomenal ideas. It slowly dawned on me that it takes time for people to follow your thought process and they do it well if you are a performer. Hence, my renewed short term goal became " To gain credibility of my line manager in my core function along with exploring new pursuits for the business unit".

Post CAT Syndrome

Will I get calls from all 6 IIMs, 2, at least 1? My quant went better than verbal, so maybe IIMC and L will surely oblige …

The Day of the CAT. Not an easy one to pass … whether you think you have cracked it (believe me, very few are in this category) or otherwise. You’ll go through your coaching institute’s site for section cut-off marks; compare with other comments from coaching institutes across the country, and wrack your brains on online forums looking for solace. You’ll probably find some … or not.

But will you think about back-ups? What’s your Plan B in case you don’t get calls from any of the six IIMs? I did.

Maybe having advise from a close friend who had gone through a similar experience helped me. She was pursuing her MBA at LBS when I appeared for CAT. When she had appeared for CAT exactly a year ago, she was going through the same feelings. Being a pragmatic person she is, she prepared for GMAT in the months following CAT and appeared for it in Jan end. By the time calls from IIMs started coming in, and she found out that she had no calls, she was ready with a back-up: applying to international bschools and ISB. In the subsequent months she worked through her apps for schools of her choice and secured a seat at the LBS in the following year.

What worked for her? The clarity about when she wanted to do MBA in her career and what were the steps to achieve that objective.

Convinced, I made up my mind and started preparing for a shot at GMAT. Knowing that quant was the easy part as I had already slogged for CAT over the past 6 months, I concentrated on verbal. I also spent a good amount of time, post CAT, to find schools that would suit my profile and that I would apply to if I did not get through an IIM. I started collecting information about the application process for international bschools and what it takes to write those essays.

This exercise helped me in two ways; I had a Plan B in place and didn’t feel threatened at the prospect of not making through an IIM; writing my essays for IIM Bangalore, after I did get my call J

Another thing that is important to start working on is a preparation towards GD/PI. Take my word, you sure don’t know how you did at the CAT till you get those calls. And you don’t want to be caught unprepared when the calls do come in and you have very little time to catch up on myriad current affair topics under the sun. So, read read read to be prepared for GDs. Know thyself and your reasons for doing MBA so that you are prepared for interviews.

Also, cross your fingers and wait for your calls/CAT percentile.

Careers in IT – part 2

In India when we talk about ‘IT’ we almost always mean ‘IT services’ and we almost always forget this big big world of ‘products’. That’s Primarily because till very recently India was not party to this whole products bandwagon ..but its now changing and there are opportunities and roles for everyone in this space too. Here is a sneak peek into the kind of roles available for MBAs in the IT products world..

Program/Product Management : Many folks mistake this to be the conventional ‘program/project manager’ role in the services organizations. This is slightly or rather quite different. These roles are typically offered by companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. Product Managers are responsible for the entire design and delivery of the product. It is he who does analysis of what the cusomters in the market are looking out for, where is the opportunity, what are competitive products offering, what innovations and ideas to come up with and hence what should we have as features in the product. Even the look and feel , colors used, the user experience when a user uses the product or say service (if you take online services like Google as an example) – is designed by the PM. The whole nine yards of the 'DESIGN' of the product from a user point of view is what he is responsible for. These roles may or may not have direct people managing responsibility (depends on the seniority, the product that you are working on, team size etc). Also, typically these folks have to be technically inclined to a great extent. Though the technical design may not be the direct responsibility of the PM, he has to understand it and stand for it to a large extent.

The other part of the role is the entire project management aspect of it, making sure the delivery is on track, milestones met, betas rolling out at the correct time etc.

Overall a fun job for those who love product design, are technical, have customer focus and get kicked when they see something they built being used by hundreds and thousands, but of course someone who doesn’t mind the job of tracking milestones and running to developers and testers to make sure work is being done and on time (needs convincing and negotiating power ). Also someone who can stand for his product in front of customers, press, evangelise it and do everything to make it a success!


Product Marketing : Very typical ‘marketing’ role. Your work can range from actually defining the price and positioning of a product in a particular market to orchestrating a launch to getting posters made and making sure they are pasted ..

The juicy part of marketing in big shot companies still happen in the US, that is because till very recently these things were more or less decided in the US office and the marketing team there ( and fair enough – after all the market is largely there). But lately with India emerging strong even as a consumer for e.g. for online and mobile services and even for say Windows (forget the piracy for a moment :-)) now inexpensive versions are being devised for emerging markets – so yes these roles are there but not as juicy as they would be at times in the US even now..but it sure will change in the near future.

But then there are other cool stuff – so how about working on the entire ad campaign for Yahoo.co.in? Or the launch of XBOX 360 in India ? Sounds cool ? Yes there are roles for these too – not too many though.

So a mixed kind of role, sometimes fun, sometimes not that fun. Depends a lot on the market, the product, the opportunity, economy (as if everything else did not depend on these - jeez!!)

Product Sales : I specifically kept this separate because it is important to know that marketing is a world different from sales. As a sales guy of Oracle or Siebel or SQL Server, all that would mean to you would be to meet those numbers on your head by pure ‘selling’. Sell licenses to customers and make those numbers. You don’t do the ‘marketing’ as mentioned above – you just sell. What else can I say about this – I think this sums it all. Needs a lot of travel, a lot of convincing power, gift of the gab, network and everything that a good sales guy needs !!

Other roles : The above three were the most standard roles – others keep coming in on a company to company basis. Online sales managers of Google to Developer Evangelists of Microsoft. Technical specialists to functional consultants who know ins and outs of a product and help customers deploy and use the products in the optimal way. Partner management and channel management like the ones offered by HP (hardware specifically)…there are a host of them..


Overall, the product space in India is heating up and its one helluva time to be in this space at this point of time as India grows big both as producers and consumers of software products. So come join the party …!!!

Careers in IT - Part 1

Most of the prospective students of MBA in India are from an IT background and lets face it..most of the jobs post MBA in India are again IT jobs :-). It would be a good idea for both the IT as well as non IT folks going in for an MBA or even doing an MBA to know what to expect..so here is a series of blogs dedicated to this. We start with jobs in IT services and will then move to products. To start with we will give a brief intro on how an IT services company functions, for those knowing this already jump below to the jobs after MBA section ..
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Lets start with a very high level explanation of how exactly an IT services company functions.

IT services companies, at a high level are divided into industry verticals including Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Health-care, Life Sciences, Manufacturing & Logistics, Retail, Media, Technology etc. Based on technology, companies also have their horizontals including ERP, CRM, Data-warehousing, BPO, Testing Services etc. Then there are the support groups that help out all these folks – that includes finance, admin, quality etc. There are finally the line functions that include sales folks etc. Any engagement typically involves all of these entities.

Sales guys are divided by the industry verticals and are typically onsite. The sales people in the US / UK etc. (predominantly foreign nationals) contact clients (in their assigned industry vertical) and keep in touch with them on an ongoing basis. After some initial talks, client circulates a "Request for Information (RFI)" to maybe some 10 companies' sales folks that he may be in touch with. We then respond to the RFI. Response typically includes general company information, practice capabilities, etc.

The client looks at all the different responses, and probably chooses 4 – 5 companies out of that to go into the next round. Client may have some system in mind to be offshored – this may include maintenance and support of existing IT systems that the client may have, development of some new IT System, installation of some new package, portfolio analysis of the client's existing applications to standardize systems etc.

Client then circulates a "Request for Proposal" for the particular work to those selected vendors. The RFP typically goes one step further on how we would actually execute the engagement for the client, what is the proposed timeline for the work, what is the approximate pricing etc. Out of these responses, client chooses maybe 1 – 2 vendors for the final round. The client then visits us probably in India / calls us for a detailed presentation at the client's site. Price negotiations also typically happen at this stage. After these detailed rounds, client may choose 1 or more vendors to work with for the projects.

Once the client / project(s) have been won, we start work on them. We station an account manager onsite to interface with the client on a daily basis and ensure all deliveries to client happen at onsite. The account manager is the face of our company at the client site. We also station an offshore delivery manager who shall lead an offshore team to deliver the project. The typical distribution of resources for a project is 25% onsite – 75% offshore.

The account manager deals directly with the client and also takes care of the people part for the onsite resources. The offshore delivery manager does the people management, as well as resourcing, ensuring budgets are met by controlling cost / delivering ahead of timeline etc. He is the single point in-charge of all the delivery that happens from offshore. In any IT company, the predominant work (75%) happens from offshore, and that's how we are able to bring in the cost savings and value to the clients. The percentage etc. obviously varies on a case-to-case basis.

Once we get a project, the following activities typically happen. The offshore delivery manager finalizes on the processes for delivery, the typical timelines for delivery and the team that will develop the client's needs. The typical phases in a development project include

Requirements Gathering : Where we interact with clients' business users / IT users and finalize on the needs and features that need to be developed
Analysis & Design : Based on the gathered requirements, you design the system on the chosen technology. This phase typically involved deciding on the technical architecture etc. in which the system shall be implemented.

Construction & testing : Once the system is designed, it needs to be coded on the technology platform to be implemented. The developed system also needs to be tested to ensure that is bug-free.

Deployment & User testing : We then deploy the system at client site and the client users test the system to ensure that it is upto their needs.
Support & Maintenance : In many cases, we also take up the maintenance and support of the systems that we develop, on an ongoing basis. This is a continuous activity and will deal with bug-fixes that may arise at a later date, new features that users may want, handling data issues etc.

In many cases, we also take up support and maintenance directly of systems that we did not do but were developed by some other third party. In such cases, the engagement starts off with a "Knowledge Transition" phase which typically stretches for around 3 months. During the first three months, client transitions all the system knowledge to us for us to take up the support and maintenance on an ongoing basis.

Jobs After MBA in IT services

When you join as a business analyst (which you typically do) fresh out of an MBA school, the following are the types of work that you would probably do

Pre-sales activity : You help / take full ownership of responding to the RFIs and RFPs. You also help sales people by preparing presentations that they need to pitch to clients in the target markets. (US /Europe typically). You need to study the client / prospect and fine-tune content that is presented to suit client needs best. Word and Powerpoint become part and parcel of your life!
Market Intelligence : You study the industry vertical you are tagged to and analyze the segment. This could be in terms of what are the pain points in the industry, who are the key prospects that we can target, what should be our pitch to such clients, which geographies we should target, what our competitors are doing in this industry etc.
Solutions : Once you analyze the industry, you start working on frameworks / solutions that can be developed to pitch to clients. You do everything it takes to get the solution to market – including the idea, the requirements, building a team to develop it, taking it to market and convincing the sales folks to sell it etc.
Requirements for projects : With reference to the project activities that I was talking about earlier, business analysts go onsite and interface with the clients to elicit requirements from them. This usually stretches for anywhere between couple of weeks to 3 months based on the scale of the project.

After going through a stint of all of these activities, you may choose one of the following roles on a long term. The stint of all of the above activities (put-together) can be done in anywhere between 9 months – 2 years based on how much IT experience a person has prior to joining. It is also highly dependent on how well the person does once inside the job.

Account Manager : If you are OK with being placed onsite on a long term, then this role is a very good one for you. You typically start off as an account manager for a small account, managing maybe a portfolio of $ 1 million per year. As you grow over the years, you have responsibility for growing the revenues from that particular account. After a few years, you probably are in a position to guide account managers and manage a portfolio of accounts in a specific region (geography in the US / Europe typically) in a specific industry practice.
Delivery Manager : If you want to stay at offshore and want to be involved with the technical side of things, then this is the role for you. You are THE person in-charge of all of the account at offshore. You are basically the account manager's counterpart. You need to ensure flawless delivery from offshore. You are also in-charge of all the people in your account. You handle the finances for your account as well as resourcing needs, process compliance, technical requirements etc.
Domain Expert Offshore : This role is still in the very nascent stages since most of the companies still have support and development of the fringe systems for clients as their core work. As a domain consultant, you are supposed to become an expert in the industry you are tagged to. You analyze the market, get in touch with analysts (who incidentally form a very strong community in influencing decisions amongst clients), formulate solutions that we should develop to talk to the market etc.

Some other kind of roles that are also available

Enterprise Services: You shall typically involved in package implementation for clients. This typically involves around 6 months or so training on specific packages like PeopleSoft etc. You would then go to a client's site and check what the client's requirements are. You would then perform a "Gap Analysis" and fine-tune your product for the client's needs.

Corporate Strategy : A few people get into this group but the numbers are far limited. Here, you work on different engagements at corporate level for short durations and keep oscillating between different engagements. All IT companies have roles here but nothing much on a long term unless you have decent amount of experience (unless you are very lucky)

Now obviously, this post gives you a generic and high level idea of the job offerings in these companies, slight deviations can and will happen from company to company and case to case..dont hang on these words but yes chew this and get a good idea of what to expect ...

..while we work on getting to you the scene in the IT products space in our next post..

...hang in there.. :-)

* The author is an IIMB alumunus and is working for a top ranked IT services company. The views expressed here are necessarily his own and do not have any relation whatsoever to the organization he works/has worked for.