The case study, capstone route to jobs

Amid campus hiring slump at B-schools, MBA students find alternative routes to employment through case competitions, capstone projects and live industry work

- Musab Qazi

Gauri Nair, a first-year student at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Tiruchirappalli, was still finding her feet at the premier B-school when she first heard about 'case competitions' or 'case study competitions' – where participants are asked to find solutions to business-related problems, either real or imaginary. Intrigued, she began competing in them with different groups of her batchmates. They turned out to be fun, and a unique learning experience.

Nair ended up winning one of the contests, Destination Dr Reddy's 2.0, organised by multinational Dr Reddy's Laboratories. What made the victory sweeter was the prize – a pre-placement interview (PPI) for an internship with the firm. While she ultimately picked another organisation for internship, two of her teammates were offered a chance to work with the pharmaceutical company. She, however, found the journey – gathering information, testing strategies, taking quizzes and behavioural tests and partaking in industry mentorship sessions – as rewarding as the result.

Pratyush Pathak, a recent graduate from SP Jain Global School, which has campuses in Mumbai, Dubai, Sydney and Singapore, got an opportunity to work on a 'capstone project' – a semester-long assignment where students work with a company on an actual business problem. In this case, the company was United Arab Emirates' (UAE) Danube Group, and the task was to understand the consumer shopping behaviour and to position the brand as a 'home experience brand'.

Pathak and his classmates did a deep dive into existing literature to identify behavioural and cultural trends, conducted interviews and surveys, developed hypotheses and validated them through statistical analysis. The insights gathered through this process were extracted into actionable business strategies, which were then presented to the company's senior management. Impressed, the organisation offered him an internship opportunity.