A good premier B School which ensures 100% placements is nothing but a large assessment center for organizations that intend to hire top-notch talent from such institutions. By assessment center, I mean every candidate that gets a seat at a premier institute has to go through a tough entrance, rounds of GD and PIs. Then that candidate needs to stand out and score consistently throughout two years of the academic journey before he or she gets shortlisted by an organization of their choice.

For organizations, It is a low-risk hiring strategy. Companies get to tap high potentials at a fraction of a cost that they would otherwise spend on talent acquisition. Moreover, it is a fast track process. All these years this process has worked very well. Thanks to the foolproof meritocratic process maintained by all the IIMs. If you break down the elements of this process, you would get the following components in the following order:

1. Coaching Classes: Charge aspirants for cracking CAT

1. CAT /Any other entrance test: Charge aspirants to take the test

1. Colleges: Charge for applications conduct selection process (PI/GD)

1. Colleges: Charge for education, charge facility and placement fees

The output of this value chain is an ambitious, young, hardworking, competitive, energetic, smart, result-oriented and resourceful individual. I am stating so many adjectives because that is what organizations want to see in their potential candidates. Hiring organizations just want to grab this crème de la crème as soon as they traverse this value chain. Now let us park this thought here for a moment.

Now think of an innovation that might offer a similar outcome. Organizations are indifferent to the four elements stated above all they need is, to reiterate: ambitious, hardworking, competitive, energetic, smart, result-oriented and resourceful individual. All we need is an efficient, democratic, fair, speedy, standardized assessment center! A place that runs diagnostics in such a way that all the four steps are disrupted and replicated more efficiently.

We have millions and millions of young people who strive to get their dream jobs. Organizations who want top-notch talent don’t really want to go through the pain of screening resources to select the talent they want. That is just so cost-intensive. Currently, IIM and other premier institutes provide the required super talent for the economy. Having said that, there is always a scope for some mechanism that exactly supplies super-talent of the same quality (with better economics and cost-saving) as the premier institutes. And the foundation of this mechanism will be based on data.