HR gets the cold shoulder

Finance gets top billing by students; HR pay is good though.

India Inc. may perceive Human Resource (HR) as one of its pillars but B-school students think otherwise. For them, an HR career is passe. They would rather opt for general management courses like finance and marketing.

Consider this: Of the current batch of 277 students at IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus, only three are specialising in HR, a mere 1.08 per cent. At the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, of 540 students, only 30 or 5.5 per cent have opted for the HR specialisation. The number was 53 last year.

BS Sahay, director, IMT Ghaziabad, concurs that finance and International Business are the latest craze among students. At IMT, 60 students have chosen International Business.

Ganesh Shermon, partner and head, people and change solutions (human capital advisory services) at KPMG, says: “HR continues to be the second option with finance and marketing retaining the dominant position. This is because HR is often seen as staffing, thanks to a bodyshop metric that governs the big IT firms.”

Paul Abraham, professor, IIM-C, says: “Strategy, finance and operations are important as these help managers in both internal management and business strategy.”

Traditionally, HR has been perceived as a personnel and administration function. According to industry experts, a decade ago India’s main industry was manufacturing, which was based on machines. Managing human resources was not considered important then. With the service industry taking centre stage, the perception has undergone a dramatic change and HR has gained importance.

However, with B-schools giving preferential treatment to finance and marketing, are we headed towards manpower shortage in HR departments?

Shiv Agrawal,CEO, ABC consultants, a head-hunting firm, does not agree. “B-schools have never been the preferred destination for hiring students for HR functions. Students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences or the Xavier Labour Relations Institute would be a HR manager’s first choice. Therefore, there is no shortage of HR professionals in terms of numbers. But we can certainly look at improving on the quality of HR students from B-schools.”

Pay packets in HR have more than doubled over 10 years. Even though B-school students might still cold shoulder job offers in human resource management, industry players say that HR does play a crucial role in an organisation.