EABS Pune wishes to attract talented aspirants through a Case-Study contest

At a time when most bschools in India are looking at various ways of attracting applicants for their programs, EABS Pune has also done something on the same lines.

One needs to first understand as to why will a bschool like EABS experiment with a contest in order to attract decent talent for applications indirectly. EABS has a 1 year PGP course which will need people with work-exp to apply for the selection process. The issue in India is that people with good work-ex do not prefer new or upcoming names like EABS and therefore the pool of applicants who end up applying to EABS are not neccessarily the ones thats going to take EABS to the next level of developments (like an ISB Hyderabad for example).

One of the things that Bschools have always done is to showcase the faculty strength (both full-time and visiting faculty). Through the contest that this college has arranged, it is evident that this strength will be showcased. The worry is that most of the people who will be involved in the process of the contest will not be full-time faculty members at the institute. Therefore, at the end of the day and the event, maybe everyone involved will be happy and smiling but no concrete objective can be achieved. Mainly that of creating an excellent pool of talent.

Contests of these kinds are a regular feature used by a lot of Business schools in India and abroad. But since most times, these contests are designed by the marketing teams or guys who have PR & Marketing backgrounds, these events end up being an extension of the kind of marketing messages that the institute intends to communicate to the aspirants base. In most cases, the first year of such a event invariably will not be that successful, the entire team from the institute feel sad about it and miss the entire point wherein they might have gone wrong.

If I am the Head of marketing and sales in such an institute, I will need to understand the kind of things that these candidates look at during their preparation and search for bschools. I know for a fact that these people do not look for an event/contest like this to decide on an institute. These people seek for precedence in bschool experiences through their colleagues or networks, and in case there is none, then they figure out about possible choices through various forums or information sessions that are organized by either the institutes or by some credible third-party operator.

I know for a fact that for every aspirant who will fit the requirement for a program like the PGP, there will be a list of "WOW" colleges that they will want to get into. But it is also a fact that they keep a 2nd list handy of those colleges that will be their safe options in case they miss out on the preferred options.

In case of these colleges in the 2nd list, the aspirants consult a lot of current students and "Star-Applicants" (those who have excellent profiles or are aware of a lot of bschools due to their networks) and then decide upon the names of bschools.

Bschools like EABS will need to also figure this part of the equation wherein they can connect the brand image of EABS to these star-applicants and create an impression so that at the time of recall, these people can refer the EABS name to potential aspirants.

The mistake that EABS will make by thinking that it's useless to target communications towards "star-performers" and ignore them will cost the mindshare and ultimately any chances of being in the preferred list of applicants of the desired profiles.