As an aspiring candidate, you will surely have your own reason for pursuing a diploma in management from one of the best PGDM colleges in Delhi. You either want to climb the corporate ladder fast, or settle down with a healthy pay-cheque or simply want to gather as much knowledge and exposure as possible to grow your existing family business or maybe start your own. Like you, many share similar aspirations and it is thus no surprise that India produces almost 3.6 lakhs PGDM graduates every year. The preference for the stream has remained at this peak for nearly a decade now and is currently showing no signs of diminishing.

However, a bit past the shiny side of things, there is this report from the All India Council for Technical Education, or popularly known as the AICTE, where the body expressed in 2017 that only 47% of the management graduates are employable. Little India updated that figure in 2018 saying that more than 61% of all MBA/PGDM holders are unemployable, either due to skill gap or lack of work experience, and the picture is not improving as the years are rolling by. The crisis, in fact, is global in nature. And students are raising questions about the reliability of the still-sought-after degree or diploma.

So, where is the plague running? What is corrupting the training process and creating that skill gap? The answer lies in the very definition of best PGDM colleges in Delhi and that is the perspective in a dire need of change. In this post, we first elaborate on the prevalent crisis surrounding PGDM. Then, we show you what exactly must you look for in your management course. Along the way, we also show you EMPI’s vision and curriculum structure that is exactly as per the modern corporate needs and gives you the cover story of our futuristic B-school. In the end, we will let you be your own judge. You will have the ammunitions to decide whether the EMPI PGDM courses sound reliable to you and can you foresee yourself of being job-ready right after passing out. Without further delay, let’s start changing your PGDM perspective.

Why the current MBA/PGDM crisis?

On the surface, it might seem that skill gap and absence of work experience might be the main culprits, but the top PGDM colleges in Delhi not trying enough to build employable skills hardly seem like a logical assumption. Plus, no veteran company comes to college compasses looking for extensive work experience. Recruiters know that most B-school students are unlikely to have worked somewhere before and are bound to come with the fresher tag. What might be the problem then?

Surprisingly, the issues are indeed skill-gap and work experience. But not in the way people generally assume. On the skill-gap front, modern job demands have drastically changed. The founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Professor Klaus Schwab, believes that we are currently experiencing the starting phases of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Here, the boundaries among the physical, digital, and biological world are gradually fading and that trend is affecting the way we live our lives and do business. Now, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is also dubbed as the Technological Revolution and this is what creates the market’s skill gap.

Management has long been seen as an area devoid of any technical influence. And most B-schools have taught their students on those lines. Their classes included business communications, retail management, operations, and finance, but strictly on commercial lines. Modern companies, however, are seeing the technological revolution. They are increasingly becoming data-dependent for making business decisions and competing with Fintech startups in the financial forum. The mismatch is thus clear. Managers are passing out without any technical expertise. Companies are looking for executives who can make their companies thrive in this new digital world. Hence, the skill gap.

The lack of work experience, on the other hand, is the byproduct of the fast-paced market. As enterprises are struggling to ensure growth, they are becoming reluctant to hiring fresh talent. Instead, they are opting for lateral recruitment where the search is on for candidates who already have the experience for the vacant profile so that the companies do not have to spend time and resources behind training the new crop. This is creating the experience buzz whose effect is being dumped on the new management graduates.

Things may seem like an impasse for management aspirants. But those are what the best PGDM colleges in Delhi are trying to solve. Your definition of the right college to pursue management must start here. Look for B-schools that are addressing these modern problems for the future workforce. At EMPI, we had long envisioned this outcome; we had anticipated that the conventional management training programs are bound to become obsolete. And based on those visions, we had designed our PGDM programs and course structures. Today, you cannot look at B-schools and see how well will you be taught management. Today, you must look for something more.

What to expect from the best PGDM colleges in Delhi?

Let us initially consider the general parameters that PGDM aspirants used to look into, or still do, while picking one name from among B-school lists.

• First is the median salary. Students who take out an education loan to pursue the 2-year course will naturally want a monthly paycheque that will easily cover the installment. Plus, a decent salary is the return on investment most seek out of a PGDM.
• The second is placement offers. Which companies come to campus and how many do they intake. Are the visiting companies finance-centric or operations-heavy? Accordingly, students decided on the college and the course.
• Lastly, the brand name of the college. Or the rank the B-school features on in most magazines and websites. The thought process is that the brand value will drive long-term success and the exposure will be that much enriching.

For a timespan, these strategies worked. Students did end up in the best PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR by focusing on the above parameters as the market held similar sentiments as well. But today, when companies are increasingly embracing the gig economy and automation are threatening jobs, those tactics are indeed obsolete.

If you go by the median salary route, you cannot expect to surely land the top job in that college. One high salary offer can pull the median salary up and you may very well find yourself lingering at the bottom half of things. In the placement way, most companies now visit most campuses. As long as the talent is right, they know that sticking to the elite is not a great hiring strategy. And as for the brand name, its popularity has largely diminished. When companies are already looking for experienced and skilled candidates, it hardly matters from which college they come from as long as they are fitting into the job role like the missing piece of the entire puzzle.

So, understandably, you will have to modify your search technique to pinpoint the best PGDM colleges in Delhi. You will need to look for modern parameters, keeping in mind your ultimate aim for pursuing PGDM. Here is an exhaustive list. Things that experts believe make a B-school futuristic and attributes that serve as essential pillars to EMPI’s PGDM programs.

1. Innovation

If e-commerce is killing retail, you will need to innovate your company out in retailmanagement. If fintech is disrupting banking services, you will need to innovate to compel your customers to trust you again. There is no better skill today than innovation. And it can be taught to aspiring managers, unlike the existing popular belief. You cannot look at PGDM today as an upskilling technique. You cannot expect to return to your same job just with a higher salary. All enterprises in every industry are searching for innovative managers, who not only bring business managerial skills to the table but also infuse it with creativity and invention.

And how do the best PGDM colleges in Delhi teach innovation? By shifting from traditional lectures to exposure-oriented lessons. For instance, to teach the disruption in effect in the retail world, professors talk about real-world companies and how they are dealing with the situation. The assessment and assignments are generally case studies that present real-world problems to students which they are required to discuss and solve. Similarly, there are events and workshops where guest speakers talk about their innovative solutions to real corporate challenges. And the management theories surround present scenarios instead of the bookish information.

The goal of the B-school should be to inspire an innovation culture and EMPI aspires to achieve exactly that with its Innovative India International Centre (IIIC). The initiative is directed to present a hub for innovators from all fields to come together and incubate ideas to assure overall growth. IIIC is a space for individuals and organisations, research scholars and mentors, all working with a common goal to innovate without limitations. As William Porter of Sloan School of Management, MIT, put it – if your B-school is not innovative, the expense and time are just not worth it.

2. AI-infusion

Living in the 21^st-century, you have surely heard of AI. And if you are already familiar with the term, you must know that most budding businesses are using it extensively. That is also your cue to understand that artificial intelligence has already penetrated the management arena. And you will continue to have a skill-gap if your selected B-school does not infuse AI into your management program. All PGDM courses of EMPI, one of the best PGDM colleges in Delhi, are AI-infused. You learn the essence of management and you build a technical base as well.

A deep understanding of the technology is not required. But you need to know enough to make business decisions. One question that companies generally raise today is how can you manage a group of AI engineers with zero knowledge of the field? They, thus, look for PGDM graduates with basic expertise, enough to direct the technical department and infuse the results with business management.

Also, companies are increasingly using AI in data science. They are seeking to use the technology to gain competitive advantage and expecting their managers to effectively use AI rather than solely focusing on efficiency. Unsupervised artificial intelligence tends to take businesses in the wrong direction. Plus, in a world where data is bound to become more secure, managers will have to depend on their intuition more, closely complemented by AI. The goal of AI-infused management programs in the best PGDM colleges in Delhi should be to equip you with the skill to function alongside AI. Just like EMPI teaches you to use the technology to your advantage, rather than entirely negating it or becoming overdependent on it.

3. Job-focused curriculum

A simple scan through any online job portal will tell you that companies are becoming increasingly specific about their job requirements. Today, businesses do not merely look for business analysts or financial risk managers but write a few paragraphs below it mentioning the job roles and skill expectations. Would not your PGDM program be more valuable if you could prepare exactly on those lines? Would not things be more enriching if you learn the exact nuances the job demands rather than diverting your attention to more generalised topics?

Job-focused curriculums in the best PGDM colleges in Delhi looks to achieve exactly that. EMPI has designed its PGDM course in Advertising Communications in collaboration with IBM Social Business Lab, Human Resource with Manpower Group, and more. The corporate associations help EMPI to bridge the gap between industry requirements and classroom lessons and your management training becomes more job-oriented. You learn exactly what the enterprises need and hence, the issue of skill-gap automatically vanishes.

Plus, with a job-oriented curriculum, lack of experience also becomes invalid. Companies helping to design the curriculum are actually training the PGDM candidates as per their business requirements without having to spend extra resources on the lessons. They no longer have to depend on lateral entries to fill their vacated positions, neither the issue of freshers exists anymore. The PGDM course becomes their training ground. And they can readily absorb the candidate after graduation. Basically, a win-win for all.

4. Entrepreneurial mindset

Not that you have to start your own business after passing out of the best PGDM colleges in Delhi, but having the mindset is important today. Along with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we are also slowly approaching the ecosystem of the gig economy. Jobs are increasingly becoming remote and contractual and companies are preferring the trend as a cost-saving technique. The full-time crop that young brands are now harbouring is a group of few managers with the required entrepreneurial mindset and outsourcing the rest of the tasks to other niche businesses.

Looking around, you can easily identify core HR companies temporarily working with multiple businesses at the same time to help them with their recruitment. Then, there are business consultants assisting brands with data analysis and risk management. As a manager, you will be looking to get into that small group full-time employees in young businesses or target the top roles in big companies that rarely entertain fresh graduates. In the gig economy, especially, your options will be limited. And your entrepreneurial mindset will surely become your saviour.

EMPI literally translates into Entrepreneurship and Management Processes International and it goes without saying that it is indeed one of the best PGDM colleges in Delhi where you can develop the right entrepreneurial mindset. For surviving tomorrow, you need to become a manager with a risk appetite. You need to have the entrepreneurial traits to digest stress, see through the down phases, and pull the company and your team up when the going is tough. Companies, irrespective of their size, look for entrepreneurs. To complete the cycle, they want innovators on their premises with a flair for uniqueness and creativity.

Time for you to judge

Any business veteran will tell you that adaptability is currently the key to success. The market change rapidly now and so does the skills in demand. Pure logic dictates that you transform your evaluation parameters as well to seek out the best PGDM colleges in Delhi and apply to the one that will future-proof your career. The right salaries wait for the right candidate. Not for the pass-outs of the big brands or supreme managerial knowledge. Your exposure today has to be modernistic. Your lessons have to be futuristic.

EMPI has always been different from the traditional B-schools, earning it the title of being one of the best PGDM colleges in Delhi. The approach it follows in its managerial course has always been student-centric. The institute believes in making you ready for your preferred market and equips you with skills that the industry will need in the future. It is futile to prepare for the present. By the time you stand at the brink of your graduation, the market is bound to change. EMPI adopts the right rule to education, that is, to build your foundation and develop skills that are relevant. EMPI has always adapted to the changing market. And it will continue to do so as the demands of the industries change.