VBS Student Blog | Insights, Experiences & for Personal Growth

Sampada Kulkarni

The most frequently asked question whenever an aspirant seeks for an admission for higher studies is about placements. VESIM gives the utmost priority to quality placements. The students with their abilities and skillsets are matched with the appropriate job descriptions. The students in our course get place accordingly as per their interests, skills & abilities. Major companies like General Mills, Amazon, Walplast and many high profile MNCs come to the campus to select the best students appropriate for their job responsibilities. The highest package offered so far is around 14-15 lacs, The lowest is around 3 lacs and the average package is around 6.7 lacs per annum. The roles being offered generally vary as per the courses offered but it starts from executives to managerial options. We also have summer internships during our first and second year where mostly all of us get place either internally through our placement Cell or externally through our contacts.

Let me tell you about the Career Guidance and Placement Cell of our VESIM, which is termed as the Green Cell. There are around 26 students from both, MMS and PGDM who are part of this cell as Green cell representatives. Every representative has few students under him/her as mentees. Thus, these green cell student mentors help those mentees in knowing their career interest and goals also the weaknesses so that they can be helped and guided to get a right job profile and right company. Apart from that, the alumni of the college also mentor students by giving tips on how to crack the interviews. Alumni come and conduct Mock GD and PI sessions which is the most crucial phase in cracking any placement interviews. Green cell also focuses on conducting Soft Skills training workshops which help individuals for building self-confidence and enhancing the communication skills. In addition to this, Green cell also hosts an event called III league every year. III stands for “Industry Interface Interaction”. Wherein many corporate people working at managerial levels in MNCs from different industries like FMCG, Banking & Finance, Retail, Analytics, IT, Advertising visit our campus. Various slots are being assigned to each speaker throughout the Day to have a dialogue with students. The specialty of this event is that no speakers’ Identity is reviled beforehand. The idea behind this is that students should not have prejudice about different managerial roles in different industries with respect to HR/Marketing/Operations/Finance. Thus, III league helps students to get better insights so that they can realize where their interest lies in building their career and also offers a platform to make good corporate contacts with like-minded people.

In this way, VESIM guides us in shaping and grooming ourselves to get right internships and right jobs to build a bright career.

Allison Amin

Every day for the past few weeks, colleges and universities around the country have made the announcement that in person classes are postponed to help in controlling over the spread of coronavirus and thus moved to a safer means of conducting lectures.

Online education is a very complex endeavour, it is important to set realistic understandings and expectations of how it can support students affected by coronavirus measures. This is especially the case for colleges that did not used online education platform very frequently before the coronavirus outbreak.

Both academics and students may lack the training needed for quality online learning. Normally, developing online lectures involves a team of experts including academics, instructional designers, programmers and illustrators. The team will collectively follow systematic design processes. Yet in this quick transition, academics who weren’t teaching frequently online or were a bit timid to teach online have started lecture that have not been devised in this way.

Facing this unprecedented challenge, most academics have chosen to do live teaching using telecommunication tools, delivering the same lectures online at normal class hours. Such simple “onlinification” of face to face lectures will result in positive experiences for academics and students only time can tell.

For many students that will be using smartphones, there are significant differences between presenting slides on projection screens in classroom lecture and on small handheld screens. The font size and page ratio of the slides needs to be carefully checked and revised to improve their readability. If course materials such as key texts are not properly digitised, students’ learning can be completely disrupted.

It’s always a challenge for academics to maintain students’ attention in face to face classes but online lecture will be even more challenging, to capture the attention of students playing online games while keeping the lecture on in the background for attendance will a be task to overcome. At a minimum, each student must have access to high-speed internet from where they are isolated. For students who are not adequately equipped with basic technological tools and skills, watching poor quality pre-recorded or live online lecture videos will be frustrating.

It is impossible to know each student’s learning or health conditions during this crisis. Considering many students may be isolated socially and physically and feeling anxious, how ready will they be to learn online? Even under normal circumstances, distance students experience feelings of isolation caused by a lack of face to face interaction and social experience.

Given the spread of the outbreak, this sudden shift to online learning will not stop but flourish. Colleges will need to carefully consider how to assess and evaluate student learning outcomes, which will open a whole new set of challenges. Students who find online learning inferior to face to face lectures may at first be reluctant of such a method but hindering or stopping students and professors from innovating and experiencing new way to learn is the only way in this crisis.

The perceived ease and usefulness of online education is largely influenced by users’ first experiences. This has a significant impact on its actual adoption. The idea that online education is being rapidly implemented even at a time of crisis excites me, as it may result in online education being not discarded after the coronavirus outbreak ends but till then faculty members at the front line of this movement need more support now than ever before.

Yashna Bhagchandani

Ethics is basically the morals, values or principles that govern our behaviour and have a conscious about it towards our society. Ethics are the religious beliefs and what the law needs to do. It comprises of standard of behaviour our general public ideas. Ethical standards likewise incorporate trustworthiness, reliability, and empathy. Ethics is a need of human life. It is the methods for choosing a game-plan and without morals or ethics our activity would be random and aimless. The reason for a business to strive is basically to derive a profit. A business is not human so it doesn’t really have feelings or to be more specific any kind of morals or values, but the business is managed by humans and it cannot get away with the idea of ethics or morals. Both, the business as well as ethics coordinate with each other to strive success.

Is the statement true that business and ethics don’t go hand in hand?

It is believed to be subjective to an individual or an organisation. There are a lot of individuals that follow ethics and are successful, for e.g.- Ratan Tata’s core values include integrity which means to be honest, transparent and ethical in their conduct and everything they do must stand the test of public scrutiny. The company is striving because of the commitment to follow the ethics and provide the best ever services.

It is said that the only way to survive for long term is to integrate ethics and business together. Businesses can compromise with ethics for a short-term benefit, but it cannot really provide success for long periods. But this can’t be true all the time because some business cannot follow ethics. For example, a non-vegetarian restaurant it has to kill animals to earn for his/her living and if he/she follows ethics which would mean not to kill animals then the business won’t be striving at all. Also, mostly businesses focus on making profits so to be ethical it can limit profits and the individual who claims to be ethical are normally just words and not implemented by actions.

Morals and values are extremely individualistic, it is incorrect to say that you can only succeed if you are ethical, of course it will take time but can’t really force someone to follow ethics. Also, business is all about profits and ethics is about what is right and wrong, these two can’t go together if the business wants success immediately.

So, to critically evaluate the statement that business and ethics don’t go hand in hand, sometimes goes wrong because it is extremely important for a business to have ethics, Short term profits can be achieved through unethical means, but long-term success is highly improbable.

"One can do well by doing great"

This means one can prevail in business by being moral. Great business brings about great morals which implies moral strategic approaches are productive.
So, to sum it up, being ethical is very important on an individual or business basis but should also realise that not everything is black and white and there is always a middle ground. It is subjective and things should be analysed based on the situation even if takes time.

Yashna Bhagchandani
Vivekananda business school

                                                                     “According to survey, 75% of educated Indians are financially illiterate.”

As shocking the above fact is, harder it is to accept it but as an individual do we really understand the difference between being literate and being financially literate? Almost 72% of all people think having a graduate or any equivalent degree make them fully literate.

What is it meant by being financially literate?

Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works: how someone makes, manages and invests it, and also expends it to help others.

 In simple terms,

                                                                       “It’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep”

Financial literacy is one of the most important aspects of an individual’s life as the future is dependent on the financial status of the individual. It is recommended to have some familiarity about the basic financial terms such as debit, credit, interest, EMI, financial ratios and Share Market to all irrespective of field they study or work in.

In India, more than half of the population are not aware about these terms until they are in high schools having chosen commerce background. The Quarter of the remaining population doesn’t even have access to the high schools thus they remain financially illiterate. These two reasons are few of the important factors to understand why majority of Indian demographics can be seen below poverty line or the middle class section.

Being educated is not enough!

In present times being only educated is not enough as financial expectations are growing on an exponential rate increasing expense column while the income is being constant or with a minimal increment.  In this tough and competitive environment if one is not aware or is financially illiterate cannot survive for long.

Educated people work for money while financially literate people make money work for them. This is the basic difference between the mentalities of the two groups. It is greatly dependent on the mentality of the individual that will it be poor or wealthy in coming future. For example, one has completed its engineering from a highly reputed college and is also placed with good salary but has no knowledge about investments, savings, PF etc. will always end up exhausting its salary at the end of the month but on the other hand an individual even with low income but good knowledge in financial aspects will always find a way to have savings, investments and still manages to better its standard of living.

In India, we have great education system which teaches us how to learn, compete and get most of our abilities but our financial education is delayed till the high school which is not even mandatory for all thus many youths opt out from the financial education leading to increased rate of financial illiteracy in the country which has become a major factor contributing in poverty of the country.

It is the high time to make our country not only educated but also financially literate to push the people above from the trap of poverty and help in the progress of the country and individual lives as well.

As it is rightly said,

                                                                 “A person can be highly educated, professionally successful, and financially illiterate.”

But the time has come to change this to,

                                                          “A person can be highly educated, professionally successful, and financially literate.”

Deepesh S Jain
PGDM 2020-22
Vivekanand Business School
 

Business and Ethics: The ideal combination

After attending my fair share of E-Talks, webinars, etc. by the industry professionals and entrepreneurs, I have concluded that there is a favorite question that the audience likes to ask time and again. If you've come this far reading my blog, you already know the question I'm referring to. Yes, you guessed it right! There's always a question that pits business against ethics. I conjecture that most of them will agree that business and ethics don't go hand in hand, especially these days, and rightly so because business is a mind game, and emotions have no room in this game. People involved in the business arrive at decisions practically. Maximizing profits and earnings is the primary goal. Values and ethics take a backseat in the business scenario. Well, I have a different opinion because, in recent times, we have had so many examples that state otherwise, for example, the PNB Scam, Kingfisher Scam, etc. Unethical means did bring profits and fame but it is always short-lived. Eventually, everything comes crumbling down. An ethical way of doing business will always be fruitful in the long run. It will build their trustworthiness and gain profits too.

Let's not pit ethics and business against each other but associate them with each other.

Anjali Nair
PGDM
Batch 2020-2022
Vivekanand business school