Dive head first or leg first?

One of the many things that people in relatively responsible positions have to do is dive into situations based on gut feel. These situations are generalized by the fact that other organizations too have gone through them, the get particular based on the organization and what the "software" or the culture of the organization is.

That understood, when one decides to take "a leap of faith", not blind but an educated leap [ hoping educated faith doesn't come off as an oxymoron ] one knows what to expect broadly. Having done our homework on the issue of "Management Trainees" we decided it is high time as an organization to get a few Management Trainees into our organization and hopefully develop a symbiotic relationship with them.

We approached many schools of both repute and the not so well know. The schools invited us with open arms and allowed us to pitch to the students after which students who thought they were interested sat in for an interview.

From our end we were well prepared having seen what the course content for each educational institution is and what is common between them etc. So we set up a testing mechanism based on the syllabi and domain knowledge requirement etc...

What surprised our socks off was, people who had performed exceedingly well in their course did not perform well in our evaluation. To help clarify, we evaluated: their domain knowledge, general knowledge [ how well read they are ], analytic skills [ real world problems ], group discussions [ soft and communication skills].

A late realization was, may be, a section of students did not apply because they hoped to be placed in a more 'lucrative' field such as IT rather than the Civil domain.

All in all, it was a good learning for us.

We plan to go the unconventional way and hire talent who engage our interests and not succomb to the norm.