Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada

‘Stay current’ is the success mantra

KEY SUBJECT: T. Lakshmi, Head of the Department of IT in V.R. Siddhartha Engineering College, delivering a talk on ‘Role of IT in Management’ in Vijayawada on Tuesday.

VIJAYAWADA: “Stay current, even technology wise,” was the bottomline message given to the commerce and management students of Maris Stella College as part of a lecture on the ‘IT for management students’, organised by The Hindu Business Line Club on Tuesday.

T. Lakshmi, Head of the Department of Information Technology at V.R. Siddhartha College of Engineering, who delivered the lecture, expressed the view that management students should use technology to keep pace with the fast-changing and swaggering world.

Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) had become functional areas for the most part for management students, she pointed out. Dr. Lakshmi observed that IT had proved to be a propitious tool for communication, if the trends across the world were any indication.

For instance, many management students in developed countries were relying on blogs for communication, as a lot of information could be shared and disseminated through blogs.

Dr. Lakshmi wanted the management students to transform themselves to suit the requirements of the industry, as mere possession of an MBA degree would not suffice. “The industry is not looking for candidates with a distinction, but for those who can communicate, take initiative and stay current,” she explained.

Sharing with students her observations on campus interviews, she said many students often fail to answer questions on concepts, basics and fundamentals of a given subject in the interviews. “Don’t be crazy about learning too many software tools. It won’t land you anywhere, as industry searches for a candidate who has a grip on fundamentals,” she said. Dr. Lakshmi outlined a few thumb rules to test whether a person was staying current. “Answer these questions to yourself: do you have your own blog? Can you download an e-book? Can you search for only .pdf files using Google search engine?,” she asked students. Maris Stella College MBA programme director G.L. Narasimha Rao, faculty member K. Nagasundari, The Hindu Regional General Manager M. Krishna Kiran and Sales Executive V. Sai Srinivas were present.

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