My First 150 Days at KIIT School of Management (Ksom)!

BHUBANESWAR, India - Jan. 15, 2016 - PRLog -- Subhra Patnaik, Assistant Professor- OB and HR at KIIT School of Management reflect on her short and beautiful journey with the institute so far. An MBA graduate herself, she worked in the corporate set up before joining KSOM.

I joined KSOM earlier this year in July in the capacity of Assistant Professor in the OB & HR area. “How are you settling in?” is a question that many colleagues have asked me ever since I joined. Now, my smiling answer to that is, “It’s like recruiting someone after a long internship and when you do that, you have no reasons to complain. In addition, no special on-boarding is really needed.” Yes, that’s exactly the case with me. I have been very much in the system ever since August 2014 when I started taking HR courses in the BBA Program as a visiting faculty. I joined because I liked the place. It is as simple as that!

Now then, the question gets more difficult: “What exactly do you like about the place?” My answer to this is longer than the previous one because there are a lot things that I would like to mention.

I am passionate about teaching and the place allows me plenty of opportunities to approach teaching in my own way. Obviously, this is a big reason for my love of the organization.  KSOM is a place where you get enough flexibility and freedom in planning your own coursework, session plans and the way you want to conduct your classes. It’s up to me to decide the flow of my sessions, the case studies that I discuss, the skill builders that I administer and the videos that I use. I decide the evaluation pattern and the text books that will be used. I decide how interactive my sessions will be. And, I decide at what point I should control the class and what point the students should drive the class. And, the program coordinators rarely say no when arranging an extra workshop for students or procuring materials needed to conduct a skill builder. Of course, since KSOM is so popular for its best in class infrastructure, there are no issues with this approach to education. More importantly, your boss never says ‘No’ to the opportunity to explore your own ideas. What else could you want?

“But, then, don’t you get bored of only teaching?” This is a question that I hear often from my ex-colleagues at PwC, where I used to work as an HR consultant before moving onto KSOM. My answer to that is a big “NO”. I get to do many other things apart from teaching at KSOM. So, there’s no question of getting bored. In the last few months of my joining, I have already been a part of a few MDPs (Managerial Development Centres) where I have delivered modules on interesting topics to officers from diverse grades in the banking sector. I have loved my time there so far, and I am really thankful to the RMC (Research, MDPs and Consulting) unit at KSOM for involving me in the projects.

I also coordinate the HR student club activities, which is a very interesting part of my responsibilities at KSOM. The club organizes an activity almost every month. So, brainstorming with students for planning the activity and implementing it in a seamless manner is challenging and gives me great enjoyment!

Last, but not least, I get enough support from the organization in terms of library, e-databases and guidance from senior professors for my research work. In fact, my research has picked up its pace after joining KSOM as a full-time faculty. Apart from that, there are continuous conferences, seminars and Faculty Development Programs that KSOM encourages us to attend.

So, to put it in a nutshell, if you want a mixture of a meaningful job that allows for skill variety, encouraging and approachable bosses, work-life balance, your own space to operate and lots of fun, KSOM is the place to be! My first 150 days have been wonderful, and I just hope it gets better from here!

http://www.ksom.ac.in/