Importance of Networking

Inspite of wanting to just chill out this Sunday after having had a brutal week at work and the previous weekend being (well?) spent on project reports and mid term exams, I like quite a few batchmates at PGSEM made it to the PGSEM Career Workshop.

It was a well timed event to bring the different stakeholders of PGSEM program (About 40 Current students , about 10 Alumni, the insightful Workshop Moderators Prof. Vasanthi and Prof. Manohar Reddy and PGSEM Chairperson Prof. Shankar Venkatgiri) on the same page about quite a few crucial issues. Well the crucial issues are better left for another detailed blog, let me pick up one of the key issue discussed - the lack of networking in the pgsem community.

Quite often many paradoxes in life spring up on you unexpectedly. Some less unbelievable some more expected. Call these "violation of Bounded Rationality" or Blind spots of the otherwise intelligent.

If we look at all the participants of PGSEM (past and present) who are indeed the same folks who are trying to provide innovative products, services dayin dayout and strive to deliver superior value to customers world over in their jobs at the various leading IT companies, sometimes overlook some simple solutions that can enhance the overall benefits of an MBA program.

An MBA program apart from other things, gives you the opportunity to network with some of the varied and diversified bunch of people who are your batchmates as well as the alumni of the institution. For folks at PGSEM at IIMB, they would not only have the possibility of networking with the entire IIM Bangalore alumni, but also they can more effectively network with the alumni of PGSEM. Though the IIM Bangalore Alumni is reasonably well connected, responsive and organized, the same cannot be said about the PGSEM alumni. Though the program has been in existence for close to a decade now, there has been no single platform or mechanism to reach all the alumni effectively.

Ability to communicate effectively is a crucial element of Networking. Often, very important PGSEM related information, "if fortunate enough" flows through a bunch of yahoo groups, personal mailing lists of few well connected people, through friends of current participants, varied other sources and "MAY" reach an alumni who "MAY BE INTERESTED" to receive this communication [[ and must add with loads of luck :) ]].

There is an imminent need for a single mechanism to communicate better with the PGSEM Alumni. After a detailed discussion with quite a few participants deliberated to consolidate the entire PGSEM Alumni. The primary ways in which it can be used could be:

1. Sustain and Improve existing relationships and make new ones. Please note as with any contact list, quality is more important than the quantity :)
2. Connect during cultural and other social events.
3. To help in discover more meaningful and potentially marketable project opportunities
4. Post jobs and opportunities which would be more suitable for the aspirations of this community
5. Channel for interactive information flow
6. Forum to collaborate on new ventures and initiatives with folks whose commitment and capabilities are better known as you would have the ability to quickly find required information about one another.

Following online networking options were discussed:

1. Single linked in group - There exists one IIMB PGSEM
2. Try and enumerate all the existing yearly and other splintered yahoo groups and consolidate into a single group.
3. Enhance the official alumni site at Iimb Alumni Association for better interaction
4. Explore the implementation of the Alumni portal on Moodle, which we have already been using for managing course contents etc.
5. Try to see if platforms cum networking sites such as Facebook can be utilised to build meaningful applications.

We over the next few weeks should close in on one primary channel for reaching out and use couple of other supplementary channels, heres requesting all of you to either send in your thoughts back to me sridhar.iimb@gmail.com or post as comments on this blog.

We will be more than glad if you would like to join us in the evaluation process too.

Request the other participants of todays workshop to add in case i missed any other points we articulated in this regard.

Before i end this post, I would like to thank the alumni who made it to the meet at such a short notice, shared their experiences and helped us get more of todays interactions.

For more on some of the takeaways from MBA found this nice article How to Get the Most Out of Our MBA

Read more on Bounded Rationality at http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/cogarch0/common/theory/boundrat.html