Long after Columbus discovered the New World and Spain’s rise as a global empire, there’s a new conquest underway. Playing host to three of the world’s top-ranked business schools, the country has now laid its claim to the world of management education. The four main reasons for this are its economy, language, internationality and rankings.

Before the financial crisis, Spain was one of Europe’s leading economies. Even now, its companies are some of the strongest firms at an international level. Banks like Banco Santander and BBVA are seen as the largest in Europe while companies like Inditex, which owns brands such as Zara and Massimo Dutti, have redefined the processes and requirements for success in their industries. Add to this economic environment, the three B-schools — IE, ESADE and IESE.

In recent years, these schools have dominated the top positions in international rankings; in some cases, this ‘Spanish League’ occupied the top 10 positions. Also, applicants to these schools, especially those coming from English-speaking countries, feel challenged (in a good way) by the possibility of doing an MBA while learning Spanish, one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. And to top it all, these schools are high on diversity. Unlike their counterparts in the US, nearly 70-80% of the classes here are made up of international students.

Increasing Interest:-
Since ESADE’s beginnings 50-oddyears ago, it has seen a steady increase in the number of applicants from outside of Spain, and in recent years particularly from India. Similarly, IE and IESE have recorded a year on year increase of 25% since 2006 and 2008, respectively. According to Santiago Iñiguez, dean, IE, “Spain has an exciting, creative business environment, a fascinating live case study of innovation, adaptation and change which is ongoing. The emergence and success of leading Spanish multinationals in the post-Franco period can be linked to a strong focus on innovation and creativity.”

This situation has significantly impacted the teaching at Madridbased IE where the number of Indians on campus has grown from 10 in 2006 to 33 in 2008. Iñiguez adds, “One of the critical elements of managing change is the need to promote and manage innovation. We address this through our markedly entrepreneurial approach, which is a key component of all of our programmes.” IE was, in fact, founded by entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, Barcelona-based ESADE has found its niche in a general management MBA that can be completed in either 12, 15 or 18 months. According to the school’s dean, Alfons Sauquet, “Management education, the MBA in particular, has been an incredible success. However, B-schools are becoming too similar in their approach and outlook and are, today, more concerned about failure than doing things differently. So, at ESADE, the MBA is more flexible and more adaptive to individual interests.”

As Javier Muñoz, director of MBA admissions at IESE, elaborates, “Areas such as ethics, entrepreneurship and general management will take the lead in business education. And fortunately, these are also IESE’s areas of specialisation. However, I also believe that globalisation will continue to be an important angle for business education while more specific subjects, such as finance, will probably take a backseat.”

Most importantly, these markedly different approaches highlight how three B-schools in close proximity to each have had to constantly compete to attract the best students (and faculty). This has in turn ensured that each works very hard to stay ahead of the game in terms of curriculum, research, etc.

Destination of Choice  :-
But, studying at these schools is still an expensive proposition with tuition varying from 49,000 to nearly 68,000 euros. In addition, one has to factor in the European cost of living. To this, Sauquet says, “It should be noted that the price of doing an MBA at a top school is more or less the same and is compensated by greater opportunities post-MBA.” Similarly, Iñiguez believes that factors such as language and cost can also be viewed in a positive light. “Spain, in general, tends to offer a decent standard of living at reasonable costs, especially when compared with costs in the US and UK,” he adds.

So, with comparatively favourable costs and (now) a preferred economic environment, could the Spanish League overthrow its American counterparts? “The value proposition of the top US and European Bschools remains distinct enough that I expect both to remain highly valued by participants depending on what they are looking to get from their MBA e x p e r i e n c e, ” opines Iñiguez. But, students looking for a more diverse and m u l t i c u l t u r a l experience, he says, may choose Spain over the US.

The Oxford Executive MBA – Part-time EMBA with similar content to the high-ranked full-time MBA : www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/degrees/emba

Source : The Times Of India

Maastricht University

The Dutch system of higher education enjoys a worldwide reputation for high quality. This quality is achieved through a national system of regulation and quality assurance. Maastricht University, situated in the picturesque south-east of the Netherlands embodies this prime quality in research and education in a variety of areas spanning health, nutrition, life sciences, business, economics, psychology, neuroscience, law, humanities, arts, knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence, etc. With its international ambitions for longterm co-operation, Maastricht University is unique with its India-focus on partnering in research and education in close collaboration with the international business and industry world. In this approach of partnerships, Maastricht University is strongly committed to promote `brain circulation.’

Together with Indian partners, Maastricht University has started a number of specified research and education projects in several areas like nutrition, heart diseases, and workflow management and is keen to develop projects in fields including IPR, culture and innovation. To support its’ joint activities with India the Maastricht Education and Research Centre Pvt. Ltd. (MERC) has started its operations in Bangalore to partner Indian academia and prospective students on new opportunities for top quality research and study. V G Kumar, director of the centre, is building a strong network across the spectrum of society to explore joint programmes as well as connecting Maastricht and India’s research champions and linking India’s business, industry world and society to these new initiatives to trigger top quality innovation.

Maastricht University in the Netherlands offers prospective Indian students true learning through a problembased learning model in a unique environment of small and interactive classes with a maximum of 14 students per group.

The prime focus of Maastricht’s education is on independent initiative and leadership development to build future world leaders. The Maastricht University India Institute (MUII) aims to host leading researchers who collaborate on increasing the understanding of contemporary Indian culture, knowledge and practice in academia, industry, business and government with the intention to disseminate the accumulated knowledge to academics and practitioners working with India.

Click to see:->Get your Bachelor Degree in 4 Years High Quality Education in English.in Netherlands.

Source: The Times Of India

Learn to appreciate your job more if it isn’t one of the worst possible ones:-

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It may be just nostalgia, but people start talking about best jobs when matters on the employment front are particularly grim. There have been several recent studies that have come out with such lists. One example: CNNMoney’s The Best Jobs in America (systems engineer; physician’s assistant; college professor; nurse practitioner; and IT project manager). Another list from China reads: salesman; real estate agent; finance professional; logistics technologist; IT expert; consultant; computer / online games programmer; medical practitioner; Internet media operator; and teacher. Indian lists, when found, still carry on about IT, finance and marketing.

What is interesting now is that attention is shifting to the other end of the spectrum — the worst jobs. And that’s where the methodology of constructing these lists is coming in for some debate. A good job obviously pays well. But there are bad jobs that also pay well. So should compensation be a factor at all?

A recent CareerCast.com’s Jobs Rated survey has some surprises. At the top is actuary (an analyst in the insurance space). Thirty years ago, The Financial Times had run a contest (in a humourous vein) titled “What is an actuary?” Readers were invited to send in their most creative definitions. Today, the man on the street is as clueless about actuaries as he ever was. Shouldn’t that be a disqualification for a Best Job title? (For the record, here is the rest of the Top 10 in the CareerCast list: software engineer; computer systems analyst; biologist; historian; mathematician; paralegal assistant; statistician; accountant; and dental hygienist.)

If that makes for strange reading, the problem may be in the methodology. The five parameters used were environment, income, outlook, stress and physical demands. The actuary doesn’t have to lift anything more than a pencil. So that gives him a headstart in the physical demands department.

Look at the worst jobs, and you will find the problems mounting. Writing in Mercury News, columnist Scott Herhold says: “Before I came to the Mercury News, the executive editor asked me why I was a journalist. I told him there were three reasons: It was an education. It was fun. And it was a chance to do some good. None of those categories showed up in the CareerCast list. In their view, a statistician has a good deal: good pay, no lifting, solid security. A firefighter only gets to save someone’s life.”

“What is a journalist doing rubbing shoulders with a garbage collector?” asks a scribe. “Must they enjoy a status similar to sailors and butchers?” (We talk of journalists because they are making the most noise. They are also heard most, because they write the articles.)

The debate will continue. Meanwhile, for those who protest too much, here is an offering: “101 jobs to make you appreciate your own more” from Jobprofiles.org. Among them are:

• Cage cleaner at the zoo: Two words — elephant dung.

• Daycare worker: You would be inundated with brats with snot and moistness on their grubby little hands. Sure, children are cute… cute until you catch an obscure illness every other week.

• Flatulence analyst: What’s to analyse? What the flatulentee had for breakfast?

• Magician’s assistant: What if the saw slips?

• Rat killer on the streets of Mumbai: Ew.

• Gravedigger: Don’t dig in the wrong spot… you may get an unpleasant surprise.”

This may seem an excursion in humour. But such jobs do exist. And a gravedigger can’t even have a mission to change the world; that old sod is unto his neck in work — one of the sons of soil buried under tons of toil.

THE WRONG END:-

Journalists and garbage collectors are amongst the 20 worst jobs (rank 181 to 200)

181. Choreographer: Instructs performers and develops and interprets routines for stage and other presentations.

182. Machinist: Operates machinery in manufacturing plants for fabrication of industrial parts.

183. Sailor: Performs any number of tasks involved in the operation of ships, boats, barges or dredges.

184. Reporter (newspaper): Covers newsworthy events for newspapers, magazines and television news programmes.

185. Stevedore: Loads and unloads cargo from vessels, routes cargo to proper locations.

186. Emergency medical technician: Attends to situations which demand immediate medical attention, such as automobile accidents, heart attacks and gunshot wounds.

187. Sheet metal worker: Constructs, installs and maintains sheet metal products for home, commercial and industrial use.

188. Firefighter: Protects individuals and saves lives and property from the ravages of fire.

189. Photojournalist: Photographs newsworthy events for publication in newspapers and magazines.

190. Butcher: Prepares meat for sale to distributors, supermarket customers and other consumers.

191. Mail carrier: Delivers and collects mail along prearranged rural and urban routes.

192. Metre reader: Monitors public utility metres, and records volume of consumption by customers.

193. Construction worker (labourer): Assists construction trade workers by performing a wide variety of tasks requiring physical labour.

194. Taxi driver: Operates a taxi over the roads of a municipality, picking up and dropping off passengers by request.

195. Garbage collector: Collects refuse on a designated municipal route, and transports trash to disposal plants or landfill areas.

196. Welder: Joins or repairs metal surfaces through the application of heat.

197. Dairy farmer: Directs and takes part in activities involved in the raising of cattle for milk production.

198. Ironworker: Raises the steel framework of buildings, bridges and other structures.

199. Lumberjack: Fells, cuts and transports timber to be processed into lumber, paper and other wood products.

200. Roustabout: Performs routine physical labour and maintenance on oil rigs and pipelines, both on and off shore.

Source: CareerCast.com’s Jobs Rated survey 2010

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• The Best and Worst Jobs of 2009 (online.wsj.com)
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BEGINNING this year Delhi University’s department of financial studies (DFS) and department of business economics (DBE) will conduct a joint entrance exams. Students appearing for the exam will be eligible to apply for a two-year master of finance and control (MFC) programme and two-year master of business economics (MBE) programme for the academic session commencing July 2010.

“Over the years we held separate exams, but maximum candidates applying for both the courses were common. The joint entrance will save time and resources for both departments,” said Muneesh Kumar, coordinator, admission and placements, DFS. This is the first time that two departments of the university have agreed to conduct a common exam.

Discussing the joint entrance exam, Kumar says, “Both the departments selected candidates on the basis of four components: quantitative aptitude, verbal ability, reasoning and general economic awareness. These four components will remain the same.” Admission will be based on the scores of the joint entrance exam followed by interviews which the departments will conduct separately.

“Going forward we would like to collaborate more with the financial studies department in terms of research and faculty exchange,” says Aradhna Aggarwal, associate professor, DBE. “Since the focus of DFE is finance we would like to use the faculty from that department to teach our students and our faculty could help them strengthen economics topics.”

Kumar says the exam is a step towards creating synergies between various departments of the university. The university offers a variety of business and finance related courses including the Faculty of Management Studies’ MBA, a master of human resource and organisational development (MHROD) at Delhi School of Economics, and the MFC and MBE. According to Kumar, however, there is not much collaboration between these departments. “The time is not far when Indian universities will be facing competition from foreign universities. It is the market-oriented courses that face the biggest threat. We have realised that we can strengthen these courses by collaborating with different departments. We can’t exist as islands of excellence,” he said.

The admission test will be held on March 21 at Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow and Mumbai. Graduates or postgraduate students (any discipline) with 50% marks are eligible to apply. The prospects and applications forms can be downloaded (www.mfc.edu or www.mbe-du.org). Last date for submission of completed application form is February 24.

Source: The Times Of India

There is nothing better than a heartwarming thank-you note :-

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Writing powerful thank-you letters is not just a formality. Thank-you letters are marketing tools that can have tremendous value in moving your candidacy forward and positioning you above the competition. Although much of what you include in your thank-you letter may have already been communicated during your interview, there is nothing more effective than the written word to etch those thoughts into your interviewer’s mind.

Eliminate concerns
If during an interview there were specific objections raised about your candidacy, use your thank-you letter to respond to and overcome those concerns. Demonstrate that the concerns are not an obstacle but an opportunity and that you’re prepared to meet the challenge.

Here is an example: You’re interviewing to be an executive for a well-established company in the US Midwest. Although you’re extremely well qualified, the CEO is concerned that you’ve never lived in the area and have no network of local contacts. Eliminate those concerns by explaining that your network of professional contacts is nationwide and, in fact, you know John Doe of local company X, have a long-standing relationship with an economic development director in the area. These contacts will only serve to expand the company’s already established network.

Reiterate your expertise
If the company communicated its specific needs, issues or challenges, use your thank-you letter to demonstrate how you can meet those needs. Example: You’ve interviewed to be the CFO of a distressed company in need of immediate action. It needs a candidate with proven success in fast-track turnarounds and revitalisation. Highlight your experience in turning a company around and showing profitability.

Highlight your best
If the company communicated its ideal qualifications for a candidate, use your thank-you letter to outline how you meet or exceed each qualification.

Example: You’ve interviewed for the position of executive vice-president of technology and product development with a high-tech venture, and company officials have clearly communicated four essential candidate qualifications. Help them see that you have those four qualifications by providing an overview of your career highlights.

Perfect length
Of course, as with anything else in a job search, there is no definitive answer. One page is the norm, depending on the amount of information you want to communicate. Letters certainly do not have to be only one page.

Remind yourself that you already have the company’s interest or you wouldn’t have been interviewing, and use your thank-you letter as a tool to communicate valuable information.

The entire job search process is marketing and merchandising your product — you. There is no reason why writing thank-you letters should be any different from your job search activities.

Send a mail
While there’s something heartwarming about a handwritten note, an email sent within 24 hours of your interview may help hammer home that you’re organised and motivated — traits most employers covet. It may take three days to get your snail mail letter to the company mailroom, let alone the intended recipient. By then, an offer may have been extended to someone else.

Source: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Many authors are cashing in on their experiences during the recession, finds MOTOKO RICH
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The new George Clooney film, Up in the Air, hit a nerve with its portrayal of an unmoored corporate executioner who makes his living by firing people. Now several writers and their publishers are hoping to catch the same wave with a cluster of forthcoming memoirs and novels that describe the fallout of losing a job, losing a house or losing an investment account.

Call it layoff lit. Next month will bring The Bag Lady Papers, a memoir by Alexandra Penney, the former editor-in-chief of Self magazine, who said she had lost all her savings to Bernard Madoff. In May, Dominique Browning, the former editor of House & Garden, has a memoir, Slow Love: How I Got Kicked Off the Fast Track, Put My Pajamas On for a Year & Found Happiness.

On the fictional front, Janelle Brown, an author whose first novel chronicled the lives of several boom-time Silicon Valley characters, has another coming in June, This Is Where We Live, that opens with a 30-something artsy couple in Los Angeles on the brink of losing their home — after their adjustable-rate mortgage adjusts.

T.M. Shine, who was laid off from his job as a feature writer for City Link, a weekly magazine in Florida, has a September publication date for his novel, Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You, which he originally intended as a memoir about being fired.

These books offer a personal flip side to the rash of titles that have taken a more reported, historical view of the financial crisis, examining the collapse of various investment banks (House of Cards by William D. Cohan), the role of government (In Fed We Trust by David Wessel) or the big picture (The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson).

But the publishers also hope that readers will view these new memoirs and novels as a timely addition to a longstanding genre: books about starting over and second acts.

“I think there’s this perennial promise that we all have trouble believing, but always turns out to be true, which is that what’s out there always holds more promise than we can imagine,” said Kristine Puopolo, a senior editor at Doubleday. That company published Cherries in Winter, a memoir by Suzan Colon, a laid-off editor from magazine who interwove reflections on frugal, more mindful living with stories from her own past, as well as recipes and remembrances from her family. “We don’t want it to happen to us,” Puopolo said. “But you can kind of live it vicariously through somebody else.”

Browning, 54, who was editor at House & Garden for 12 years, applauded the string of books examining the personal effects of the financial downturn. “I think it’s terrific that there are books coming out about this,” she said. “We need to focus on the human toll this is taking,”she noted, adding, “It’s a very human conversation about depression, loss of self, loss of pride and loss of bearings, and those are individual stories.”

Some of these books have been written by authors who held very lucrative positions and had the resources to help them through their financial downfalls. Some booksellers wonder if the average reader will be able to empathize with them.

Indeed, early in Browning’s memoir, she contemplates a trip to Brooks Brothers to buy a pair of pajamas for better lounging. And in The Bag Lady Papers, Penney writes of having to sell two of her three homes and describes how a friend takes her to the Four Seasons Grill Room for lunch to commiserate.

“I don’t know that a lot of people are going to be relating to a Dominique Browning or an Alexandra Penney,” said Karen Corvello, adult buyer for R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn. “A segment would, but not that broad a segment.”

Lauren LeBlanc, a senior editor at Atlas & Co., who edited Browning’s book, said that even if readers were in different financial straits, they should be able to relate to the shock of losing a career. “Obviously she’s not destitute, like a lot of people end up being,” LeBlanc said of Browning. “But at the same time a lot of the experiences she goes through are something that a lot of people will feel sympathetic to.”

Loss is loss, said Ellen Archer, publisher of Hyperion, the unit of Disney that is releasing The Bag Lady Papers. Even a person who has a lot of money to begin with suffers when it is gone, and goes through a lifestyle re-evaluation.

“It makes you think, ‘What if that happened to me? What really is important to me?’” Archer said. “I think it’s a very relatable question.”

Some booksellers suggested that for those who were actually living through the experience of layoffs or the loss of a home — or who had friends or family members who were — reading about it might not be their first choice for leisure time.

“I would say that more readers are looking for something to not think about such things,” said Rona Brinlee, owner of the BookMark, an independent bookstore in Atlantic Beach, Fla. “For the moment, our customers are looking for good literature and escape.”

So far, the appeal of memoirs of the Great Recession has been limited. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 per cent of sales, Cherries in Winter, which was published in November, has sold just 3,000 copies. Puopolo noted that Cherries had been selected by Indiebound, a trade group representing independent booksellers, as a notable book for January.

Some publishers figure that novels with recession-resonant plot points are another way to lure readers. “We thought there would be a lot of books out that were nonfiction,” said John Glusman, who edited Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You for Shaye Areheart Books, a Random House imprint.

Shine said he enjoyed the freedom of writing fiction. When he originally conceived a nonfiction account, he had planned to track the post-layoff lives of colleagues who also lost their jobs. But once he began writing fiction, “I could decide their futures rather than waiting to see how it would pan out.”

Then again, his publisher “could have said ‘I want to turn it into a musical,’ and I would have said, ‘Hold on, I’ll get my harmonica,’” noted Shine, who has written two nonfiction books. “I was just so desperate.”

Brown, who has been a freelance contributor to The New York Times, started out writing a novel about a couple trying to buy a house. But after writing about 120 pages and showing them to her editor, Julie Grau, publisher of Spiegel & Grau, another Random House imprint, both agreed that it wasn’t working, and that times had changed. So Brown began a new novel about a couple in the process of losing a house.

As for other memoirs and novels mining the current economic climate, Brown said she wasn’t the least bit surprised. “We live in an age where things get from news feed to news story to book to movie very, very quickly,” she said.

Source: New York Times News Service

Panic and credit crisis fuelled a deeper recession this time, but there are chances of a faster recovery, says FLOYD NORRIS.

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Will labour markets in the United States remain weak for an extended period? For many economists,the answer is yes. They point to the “jobless recoveries” that followed the two previous recessions, in 1990-91 and 2001, and see no reason for this recovery to be any different. That has led some to call for a new round of stimulus spending.

“Although some hiring was reported in a few Federal Reserve districts, labour market conditions remained generally weak,” the Federal Reserve said this week in its Beige Book report on economic conditions around the country.

At the Federal Open Market Committee meeting last month, the minutes reported that participants “generally expected unemployment to remain elevated for quite some time”. But history indicates there may be more hope for a faster rebound than is generally expected. The two jobless recoveries were preceded by recessions in which employment declines were modest. But after recessions involving a sharp drop in employment, the rebounds have been much stronger.

Since 1950, there has never been an employment decline as deep or as long as the one that appears to have ended late last year. The number of jobs reported by the US government’s survey of employers fell for 22 consecutive months, after employment peaked in December 2007. That string ended in November with a tiny gain of 4,000 jobs, the Labor Department now estimates. But there was a renewed loss of jobs in December.

There have been only five other periods since 1950 in which declines lasted as long as 10 consecutive months. The job market came back quickly after three of them. In each of those cases, the loss of jobs during the decline was at least 2.3 per cent of the workforce.

The decline in jobs was more modest in the two previous recessions — 1.5 per cent, when the string of job losses ended in May 1991, and 1.7 per cent when the string ended in May 2002 — although there were further declines later in 2002 that brought the total loss to 2 per cent.

By contrast, the number of jobs was down 5.2 per cent from the level of December 2007 when the string ended in October. That fall is more than the 1991 and 2002 declines put together.

The jobless recoveries were notable for the fact that unemployment had not risen especially high during the recessions, but climbed higher after the date later chosen by National Bureau of Economic Research as the end of the recession.

In the 1990-91 downturn, the highest unemployment level was 6.8 per cent. But joblessness kept rising and peaked at 7.8 per cent in June 1992, 15 months after the recession ended. Similarly, during the 2001 recession, the unemployment rate rose to 5.5 per cent. But more than a year after that, it topped out at 6.3 per cent. In the other downturns, however, the unemployment rate peaked during or soon after the recession ended.

If jobs do recover more rapidly than many expect, it may reflect the fact that this recession was deepened by the credit crisis and near panic in autumn 2008, after Lehman Brothers failed. Many companies cut back on every expense they could, fearful both that business would dry up and that they would be unable to finance their operations.

The sheer scale of cuts may have left companies in need of more workers because the cuts were overdone. If so, they may need to hire even before there are strong signs of economic recovery.

Source: New York Times News Service

Human resources is often considered a woman’s job although the top positions are dominated by men

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Click to see:->

Gender role

Where are our female corporate leaders?

HR managers do not have the resources (human or otherwise) to make it to the top: how often have you seen a CEO who has come from this functional background?

This is a controversial and obviously unacceptable statement, but anecdotal evidence indicates the second part of it is very true. Various studies of the “Route to the Top” have analysed the functional areas CEOs come from. Marketing, finance and legal have all had their times in the sun. But HR has never made a showing. “Sadly, HR professionals don’t even make it to the company board,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant Shashi Rao.

There is more to it than meets the eye, however. One school of thought says there are more women than men in HR — it is a favoured profession of the fairer sex. Very few women make it to the top no matter what route they take. So the chance of an HR professional becoming the CEO is further reduced.

This is not being chauvinistic. There are reasons for women preferring HR. According to a Graduate Management Admission Council survey in the US on career choices, four times as many women were interested in HR positions as men. The reason: HR is perceived as less demanding and more conducive to raising a family. By inference, men who join the profession are regarded as being more from Mars than from Venus and thus unfit for the hurly-burly of corporate leadership battles.

Studies bear out the domination of women in HR. An analysis by the UK-based Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) of its membership shows that 72 per cent are women. Debate at the institute has thrown up several possible reasons for this:

• Men are not attracted to the profession

• HR needs people skills that women are better at

• In education, men have a “hard” science background, while women go in for “soft” science

• Men are more competitive

• Some people see HR as a soft and fluffy job. This is a disincentive for men

• Women find it easier to be ruthless in taking people-related decisions

• Women are less bothered about their position in the hierarchy

• Women are better at multi-tasking, which HR demands.

HR traces its roots to welfare workers in 19th century UK, whose job was to keep out exploitation of women in the workforce. Welfare staff were almost all women. As women in the workplace multiplied, welfare workers also took on the task of recruitment and hence personnel management. The progress from personnel to HR was a natural consequence.

Despite the fact that men didn’t get much of a look in (just as women didn’t get an entry into, say construction or logging), there is a curious anomaly in the numbers. If you analyse the top levels of HR, there are many more men than women. Some 60 per cent of HR directors are men, says the CIPD. Estimates from the US put this as much higher.

There is one place, however, in which women dominate at the top of the HR function. This is in first-generation, family-run businesses. The boss thinks nothing of appointing his wife to handle the job. There are many examples. But take a look at a private airline whose image is rapidly going downhill. Pilots and ground staff are practically in tears because of their lady HR head’s unlettered interventions. “In India, corporate social responsibility and HR are two areas regarded as hobbies — something the family can take care of,” says Rao. “The firm won’t suffer if you make a mess of CSR. It will, if you have an amateur handling HR. And the profession suffers in the process. HR is very important; it is vital. It has an image problem anyway. It gets worse with these female jetsetters.”

HER domain :-

Occupations in which women outnumber men (US)

*Public relations manager

*Financial manager

*Human resource manager

*Education administrator

*Medical and health services manager

*Accountant

*Auditor

*Budget analyst

*Biological scientist

*Preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teacher

*Physical therapist

*Writer

*Registered nurse

Source: US Department of Labour, Bureau of Labour Statistics, Employment and Earnings, 2008 Annual Averages

Over the years, B-Schools have witnessed an increase in terms of enrolment by engineers. However, while engineers are getting absorbed in managerial jobs, the core-engineering sector is facing a manpower deficit. In order to address this problem the Delhi Technical University (DTU) has started a programme to hone the managerial skills of engineers while keeping their technical expertise intact.
………….
The programme offered by DTU’s Delhi School of Management (DSM) offers three specialisations — information and knowledge management, information technology management and supply chain management.

Elaborating further, SK Garg, head, DSM said, “The attrition rate in service industries like IT and software is high. Moreover, there is a lack of documentation in terms of decisions taken at the managerial level and knowledge produced. Only someone with a technical background can understand, preserve and retrieve such knowledge. With this in mind, we are offering a specialisation in knowledge and technology management.”

Supply chain management is a crucial aspect of any company. “General MBA, too, offers this subject. However, through a specialisation students learn to develop, evaluate and implement strategies, concepts and management approaches in logistics and supply management ,” explained Garg. Referring to specialisations in IT, he said that IT companies were hiring a lot of engineers as programmers. “But companies today require system analysts,” he added.

Students are introduced to core management subjects in the first semester and to specialisations in the second semester. By the third semester, the student is able to decide on his/her specialisation. The final semester gives an option to select a specialisation with one of the core management subjects like finance, marketing and human resource, among others. The last date for submitting applications is February 8.

Source: The Times Of India