Chamber Consultation Hour with Dr. Swati Alok

This week, Editor Mudit Bansal (MB henceforth) from De-Economist sat down with Dr. Swati Alok (SA henceforth), Assistant Professor in the Economics and Finance Department of BITS Hyderabad, to discuss how she approaches life, career and the world around her.

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MB: How was the college life for you?

SA: My college life was full of fun. I did B.Tech. from Nagpur University and MBA from XIME. Hostel life - a very important aspect of life, was fantastic. It teaches how you share, care and understand each other and you also understand the value of money and why others behave the way they behave. I was a bit reserved during my B.Tech. days, so my actual personality grew while I was doing the MBA. It was a cultural shock for me to shift from technical to management filed  as requirement was  totally opposite to my personality. MBA is all about teaching you how to manage things, life, problem solving skill, quick fix mindset, jugaad thinking i.e. what we popularly  say “jugaadonomics”. There I did specialization in Human Resource Management and Systems, then, walked a few miles in corporate life and finally stepped into teaching profession.

MB: When did you join BITS? How has your journey with BITS been?

SA: I joined BITS in 2010, as a PhD student and a lecturer. You can say that I have seen the BITS Hyderabad from nascent days.  Those were the days when we had a single staff-room room in the C-block, limited faculties handling the whole department. I have seen the dedication of the faculty and how they ran the show as a one big-family. We were very well acquainted with each other and it was fun. I would say, I grew academically along with this college where I got opportunity to be its students like you and also faculty teaching you all. Enjoyed being on both side of the table and both the roles as student as well as faculty.

MB: What did you find interesting in management that you chose it as a career?

SA: From the beginning , I had more inclination towards technology and science . You can say I chose management accidentally. While working in quality control department of Johnson & Johnson, I was moved to the Band-Aid production department. Then after getting placed in Glance cosmetics through campus placements, I was supposed to join the production department but some problem came in and they asked me to manage marketing for 6 months before making me move to production. However, I start enjoying the work,  increased my liking for management, hence opted “management” as career.

MB: Apart from the internet and newspaper, how do you keep yourself updated with the field?

SA: The subject of management is very dynamic. It keeps on changing. Personally, I really admire the cases and simulations taken-up by the Harvard Business Review and my most of the lecture are designed based on it.  Then, being member of SHRM club, I get exposure to various cases, articles and practitioners toolkits. Apart from this, I keep interacting with other faculties and friends working in business domain, take part in conferences and workshops to keep myself updated.

MB: Are there any interesting facts/ incidents/ story that you come across and would like to share?

SA: Yes, there are a few. One is when I was a HR consultant in a company, where we had to recruit for one of our client Intel corporation. There used to be 5 rounds of interviews, so naturally it’s difficult to get hired. There was one candidate who got selected after the 5th round and got the job confirmation letter. But soon after 2-3 days, we were informed that he could not clear background check, just because he was involved in some minor wrong doing during his college days. What I’m trying to say here is that, you never know a small mistake made during your college days can cost you a dream job. So, avoid any misdeed that may hamper your career.  

Another incident I came across was after completing my MBA, when I had a campus interview for L&T. Like every student I was busy the whole time, getting ready for it. During the interview, the first question they asked was, “What’s the headline of the todays newspaper?” and that was the only day I had not read the newspaper. Then they asked the generic question, “Why did you choose MBA after doing B.Tech?” to which I replied, “because I got bored of doing titrations!” Again, a big mistake, as it was a quality control operation. Coming out of the room after reading their unsatisfied faces, I found a newspaper lying on the couch. And guess what was the headline? “L&T bags large deal to build one of the terminal for the Bangalore Airport”. Moral of the story is - for whichever company’s interview you go, look at their website, browse their values and visions, do a thorough research about their current standing in the corporate world, even when you think they are going to ask technical question because you never know, one HR, sitting in the room might ask you something as simple as the headline of the day!

MB: How do you connect this field with other fields of our university?

SA: Whatever be the functional domain, one has to know how to run it. Management is like a potato; it aligns with almost everything. The competency of BITS in having the diversity of technology and sciences streams helped me a lot in doing inter-disciplinary projects with the students. Whatever be the functional domain (civil, mechanical, or computer science) everything boils down to successful implementation of the process design, that is (say example lean management, six sigma), product design (ERP, AI, machine learning) to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness, and that is what management is all about.

MB: Could you tell us about a typical day as a professor?

SA: I divide my day into 2 parts – before lunch and after lunch. Apart from following timetable for lecture/tutorial classes given, I prefer to do learning and research works in my first part. Most of the reading work, lecture preparations, research activity is done during this time. Post lunch, I do all the administration / paper work, meeting with students related to projects or with Ph.D. students, chamber hours etc.. I prefer to do any department activity also during second half.

MB: What projects are you working on?

SA: In the past 6 months I have completed 3 projects:

• Women empowerment and gender studies. It was on identifying antecedents of women empowerment and its trickle-down impacts on their children health and education (domain: development economics with Dr. Sudatta Banerjee)
  

• Dengue management (with Prof. A. Sajeli Begaum of Pharmacy Dept.): It was on how community training can enhance positive dengue management behavior (domain: health management)
  

• Factors that differentiate career persister women with non -career persister in IT industry
  

I am currently working on:

• Impact of National culture on Covid mobility ratio especially people movement in leisure places like mall, park, etc. After reading an article stating that Americans are enjoying COVID-19 parties despite being aware of the fact that it may impact their life, made me curious enough to take it as a project.
  

• Impact of long-term impact of “work from home” on employees well- being.
  

• Why today Generation Millennial are opting for freelancing or Sub-contracting jobs?

MB: Who inspires you the most and why?

SA: It could be anyone!  I can get inspired by a normal person whom I met in daily life or by a business tycoon or a politician, etc. I get inspired by Mr, APJ Abdul Kalam watching how passionate he was about his profession or by MS Dhoni for his control over emotions, or even a critical patient in Tata Memorial cancer institute showing strong survival instincts.

But that being said, my father is most special to me and inspired the most. The way he looks at life, solve problems, and his positivity, always make me think how he would have solved the problem whenever I face one.

MB: What is the impact of Covid-19 on the working of companies and their placement and hiring procedures? Is it significant? How evident is the impact w.r.t college placements?

SA: The way of working of companies  is totally changed with the advent of WFH system. I read somewhere that what started as compulsion, now companies are trying to make it as a NEW Norm because they are saving in travel expenses and facility expenses, also the productivity increased by 12-14% during lockdown. An article from TCS said that they will keep only 25% of their employees in office by 2025, which they named it as 25-25 vision.  So, from the company’s perspective, being in a cost-saving mode, it is a golden opportunity for freshers because hiring for one senior post is equivalent to hiring 4 to 5 freshers.

Talking from the college’s perspective, most of the companies are still honoring the offers, or worst case they are delaying the joining dates Some industries like e-commerce, entertainment, logistic, pharma, medical-diagnostic are booming and there will be more automation in manufacturing and core engineering areas. Then our college students has an edge because of its unique inter-disciplinary system, i.e., students working in both technology and sciences.

MB: Recently, there was a lot of controversy about Google giving internships ­only to girls excluding boys despite them having better resumes. You have worked on career paths of women in the tech/services sector, so how do you explain the importance of preferential treatment for women through your research, so that students can better understand the complexity of the problem and not simply malign their fellow BITSians who acquired the internship?

SA: I personally believe that when it comes to exhibition of skill or intellectual capital or knowledge, men and women are same. So why give preferential to girls while selecting them. By doing so they are actually discriminating against women. But yes, when we look from the company perspective, innovative companies like Google strategy is to maintain high diversity ratio in the workplace as more diversity = more conflict = more ideas leading to innovation. and hence for enhancing diversity ratio, one of the policies might be to give preference to girls during internships. Or I guess that even if google loves to maintain equal ratio of male/female at workplace, they need to give preference to girl during hiring process as ratio of female to male may be 2 in 10 that might be studying the computer science. Having said that, I personally feel that Google might be not lowering any bars for entry, it just providing platform for more female candidate to apply for internship, however selection finally will be based on ones’ caliber and coding skill.  

MB: According to you, what are the qualities that you would ask our fellow BITSians (especially the ones in final year) to inculcate in order to excel in the field.

SA: I always teach this in management, strategy of any successful company is to look for three things: fitness, distinctiveness and sustainability. I would ask my students the same:

1. Do SWOT analysis of yourself to make yourself FIT in the market.
   

2. Show your DISTINCTIVENESS by being expertise in your functional(technical) domain – Enhance your specialized skill (whatever you have chosen). Also, would like to reinforce that think twice before leaving technology as it is very difficult to come back once left, even though it is tough, think from long term perspective and not short term gain. It would be only your functional domain that will make you different from the crowd.
   

3. Follow your passion and chose it as your career for sustainability.
   

Qualities one should inculcate if they want to pursue a career in management:

I always ask my students, “Why do I give case studies and caselet in exam paper ? Why consultant companies in placement ask you all to solve case study?  Objective is to  enhance or measure your critical problem-solving skill which is the most important skill required as manager.

And other things that are very important in todays dynamic world are continuous learning abilities, the tolerance to ambiguity and flexibility to work in chaotic environment, tolerance to failure and learning from mistakes. Perseverance – because these days, students give up to easily.