By more open, I mean, of course, more open to giving out information. To the media. To those out there who wonder what goes on at these green, leafy Xanadu-like places from where 22-year-olds emerge to get Rs 1 crore salary offers.

Take the summer placements that just got over. This is the time companies descend on IIMs and other business school campuses to hire interns who will do projects for them next summer. Read more…

IIM-A began its summer placement, where the Class of 2011 tried to ensure it gets to spend a productive time in summer jobs next April, on a positive note. Recruiters are back, and they are hiring, indicating they might be back to hire for full-time positions four months from now.

The mood at campuses is optimistic. A note of caution, though, comes from an unlikely source – the Nov 9 issue of Newsweek magazine, out on news-stands, warns that we might be in the next financial bubble. Read more…

FMS  just concluded its summer placement season. JBIMS, Narsee Monjee, the IIMs are next in line. Though recruiters are back, expect sanity to prevail all around. No sky high salaries, no mouth-watering profiles and no recruiters and campuses playing games with each other. Read more…

A management student from Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode has started a twitter page, tweeting CAT questions every hour following it up with answers.
Gaurav Garg aims this essentionally at working professionals who can prep for the management test during a break. Garg’s company, One-Learn also provides prep tests on the more traditional online and CD platforms.

Lying on resume is very common in India. We’ve observed lot of people mention projects that they never were part of. People also show fake work experience to hide gaps in employment history. In fact, this practice is so common that most employers assume that there is some level of exaggeration in every resume. At iimjobs.com, we decided to conduct Business Ethics Survey to understand the conduct of jobseekers in existing business environment.

Thirty Seven percent of the respondent said that they have lied on their resume at some stage in their careers, according to the study conducted by iimjobs.com. Twenty Six percent respondents confessed to lying about employment history and projects in their previous organisations while Six percent of the respondent said that they’ve lied about their academic credentials.

“There is no doubt that job seekers lie on their resume. It can go from lying about roles, responsibilities and accomplishments to marks and academic qualifications. Not every organization can afford background checks and it becomes very difficult to catch these lies. I’ve never seen a job seeker get the job if he is caught lying on resume, how trivial the lie may be”, said a recruitment manager with a large media company.

Sixty three percent of the respondents said that they search for new job listings at workplace using their employer’s resources. There is nothing wrong with looking for a job while being employed but using employer’s resources is questionable and risky given that it could be monitored

Eighty seven percent of the respondent said that they consider employer’s previous record of business ethics at the time of accepting job offers. Only Six percent of the respondent said they didn’t care about employer’s previous record. “The organisation’s past record is important but the problem is that it’s very difficult to find such information unless you know someone who is working there for a while”, said Ramesh Patil an IIM A graduate working with a large telecom operator.

iimjobs.com Business Ethics Survey

The survey was conducted from September 21 to October 5, 2009 with over 1700 MBAs from top business schools participating in the survey. Median age of respondents was around 28 years.

What do you think? Would you ever lie to get your dream job?

——————–
Tarun Matta is the founder of iimjobs.com – an exclusive job portal for MBAs from IIMs and other premier business schools in India.