Faculty + CAT aspirant = good CAT score?

Rozelle Laha

13 years ago

Faculty

At any given point in time, there are at least 500 faculty members of MBA coaching institutes,who are also simultaneously preparing for CAT. These ‘aspirants’ who have already taken CAT once and decided to take a shot at it once again get hired as faculty members for the section (CAT) which they have scored well and comfortable with. In some instances, they also don the hat of a center head at these institutes.

For the institutes, this works, since they have young, fresh minds to teach students at comparatively lower salaries and for the ‘aspirants’ it works better because it is free learning and teaching with some pocket money thrown in.

The teacher-aspirants

Manish Harodia completed his B.Com in 2004 and started teaching at an MBA coaching institute in Pune from the same year. He reasons for it was back then there were not many job opportunities for B.com grads. He says: I took up a job (at the coaching institute) more because I had no choice. Being a non-engineer 8-10 years back meant a job selling credit cards or insurance. He joined as faculty for the Data Interpretation (DI) section at the institute. At the same time,he was preparing for CAT himself. He got a final admit from IIM Kozhikode in 2006.

When PaGaLGuY asked him whether his teaching stint helped him get admission into the IIM, this is what he said. I was asked to find out the square root of 2000. It was done possibly to test my skills in handling such tough questions in a classroom. They were about to offer me a pen and a paper for solving the answer. But I answered it before they reached out for it. When asked how I managed to be so quick and accurate, I shared some of the concepts that I had learned through teaching a class and not from textbooks. I was able to convince the interviewers and explain them that how I helped the students in more ways than one and that is how, I believe I got selected.

At the top of Ayush Gupta’s priority list was devoting ample time towards his CAT preparation. That made him take the decision of leaving his IT job as soon as he realised that the working hours at his company were long and would not allow much scope for preparation. At present, he is working with Career Forum, Agra, an MBA coaching institute as a faculty of the Verbal Ability (VA) section.

Ayush says, I had got GD/PI calls from NITIE, Mumbai and Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon in mid-March, 2011 when I was working. It was my training period at the office and I could have managed to get leave for a maximum of a day an a half during the training period. I was working in Mysore and my interview venues were Mumbai and Delhi. Since I was unable to attend those interviews I decided to leave the job. And instead prepare for CAT-2011. I joined as a faculty for CAT coaching as I felt that it would keep me in good stead with the subject.

Ayush had taken CAT in 2009 and 2010 as well. He had scored 97.75 percentile in 2010 and 95.6 percentile in 2009. He had scored 99.86 percentile in the VA section in CAT 2010 and so, applied for the position of a VA faculty at Career Forum, Agra and got selected for the job. Ayush says, Teaching other people clears a lot of your own doubts as you yourself have to be well-informed in order to be able to guide others.

The aspirant-managers

Some of these aspirants teach students and also hold some managerial post at these coaching institutes. P Karthikeyan completed his B.E in 2009 and joined a call center. But, he left it within a few days after joining as he did not like his work. So, he joined Trichy Plus, an MBA coaching institute in Trichy, as a faculty of Quantitative Aptitude (QA) and DI. He was promoted to the post of a manager recently. He is also involved in franchising the coaching institutes to other states. And he is also a CAT-2011 aspirant.

Coaching institutes who hire them

Quite a few coaching institutes across the country give opportunities to young students with good knowledge skills. These students-cum-faculty are usually paid a salary of Rs. 16,000-18-,000 per month based on the number of hours they teach. On an average the senior and more permanent faculty at such coaching centres get a package of

Rs. 50k per month (this figure is got from sources working at institutes). Institute owners say that such teacher-aspirants should also have an aptitude for teaching, a good CAT score is not enough.

Vinayak Kudva, Head of Products at IMS Learning Resources says, We want people with exceptional teaching skills. We recruit people with good knowledge about the subject and expertise in teaching. While hiring, we don’t see if the person is preparing for CAT or not. We follow a rigorous selection procedure.”

Most coaching institutes require the teacher-student applicants to write a test that checks their abilities in the subject and suitable candidates are then interviewed before they get a final offer.

Vivek Sarda, head of MBA training department at Catalyst (a Division of Ideal Classes Pvt.Ltd.) who does not believe in hiring these aspirants as faculty says, Recruiting such MBA aspirants for taking group discussion classes is beneficial. But, in order to teach for the written sections, the person needs to have a lot of experience. Getting good marks, in one section of the CAT paper, does not make a first time CAT taker an expert to train a batch of students for that particular section. Teaching and learning are two different processes.”

He adds: “One cannot crack the written the exam in a day. I believe that they at least need four to five years of experience.

Manish Harodia, who has completed the whole cycle of training batches for MBA and doing an MBA himself and who is now the Dir ector of Tathagat and 6Pi in Pune, says that he does not encourage these aspirants to teach at his institute as they by default leave the institute once they convert their b-school calls.

Students who take classes from these aspirants

Students at coaching institutes say that they feel more comfortable in the classes taken by these aspirants as they say these teachers usually understand their problems. These faculty know recent trends in the subject.

Anapurba Mukherjee, Final year MBA student at Acharya Institute, Bangalore says, I felt more comfortable in the classes taken by the student-faculty as the age difference between us was not that much. We gave importance to their opinion as whatever they said was part of their recent experience. With the pattern of the CAT paper changed, difficultylevels have also changed.”

Kunjan Detroja, a doctor working with a medical college in Valsad, Gujarat says that classes taken by such faculty were more energetic. Faculty who have recently appeared for CAT had more of an idea aboutchanges in paper patterns. However senior faculty are good at concepts.”

B-school officials

M J Xavier, Director of Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi says, As a trainer at some coaching institute, a candidate only teaches, he/she does not acquire any managerial skills. It does not count as any relevant work experience. However, candidates who are entrepreneurs and own a coaching institute or are the center head at some coaching institute are considered to have work experience. If they have their own institute, they have learned how to manage it. We evaluate the candidates based on their knowledge about the job profile they have handled during their work.

Officials at some of the other IIMs, who did not want to be named, said that in most of the cases involving engineers, they considered working with some IT company as a relevant work experience. The most important thing involved in short listing the candidate would be their CAT score.

CET colleges and work experience

M A Khan, Director of Sydenham College of Management Studies, Mumbai says, If the company where the candidate is working is registered and is listed under any stock exchange, we consider it as work experience and marks are allotted with a maximum of 2 for more than three years of work experience.

Dr. Suresh Ghai, Director General, K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research adds: This kind of teaching at coaching institutes help these aspirants in preparing for the entrance free of charge, in fact, they get paid for it as well. They might gain some confidence out of this but for us, it is not any relevant work experience.