Experts stress on competitive management skills

To emerge as successful business managers in the prevailing recessionary times, the management students need to pick up the right employable skills, aim to work with an open mind and stop looking at their institutes as placement agencies.

These were the views put forth by experts at the National Management Seminar on Business in Recession: Shaping the Management Skills, organised by the city-based Asian School of Business Management (ASBM).

“The budding managers need to pick up the right set of skills which would help them to survive and excel in the prevailing period of economic recession. Moreover, the management students should prepare themselves for a continuous learning process in the corporate world”, Praksah Panda, general manager (HR), Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited.

ASBM's retail management programme in association with Pantaloon Retail is one of the best sector specific management programmes in the country as it is designed in sync with the requirements of the retail industry.

Sanjay Radhakrishnan, vice-president (HR) of ICICI Prudential said, “Management students got to work with a single minded devotion and an open mind after entering the corporate world. They have to develop the required employable skills and stop viewing their institutes as the placement agencies.”

Talking on integration of HR processes with the company's core business, Ashok Chanda, chief of HR strategy and shared services, Gati Limited said, the HR personnel need to think of the ways in which the HR strategies can be integrated with a company's core business.

Speaking on the occasion, SN Patro, the state minister for revenue and disaster management said “The prevailing recession is like a swine flu for the corporate sector which originated in the US and later spread to different countries. However, India has not been impacted in a big way by the recession.”

“We faced a recession like situation when we came to power in Orissa in 2000 with the state having a revenue deficit of Rs 4,000 crore. Improved revenue collection enabled the state government to achieve a surplus of Rs 5,000 crore by 2008”, said Patro.

Biswajeet Pattanayak, director, ASBM said, “The economic recession needs to be managed properly and we have to realize that the recession also offers a silver lining. India is among those few countries which are least impacted by recession.”