A true test

The Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and accepted by several other business schools in the country, came in for some adverse attention last year, when the question paper was found to have leaked.

This year, all precautions that could have been taken to prevent a re-occurrence, apparently were and the event went off smoothly; except that with the kind of media attention focused on it, something was bound to come up and so it did.

This year, the pattern of the question paper was different from its predecessors. Instead of 150 questions, each carrying equal weights, there were 123, with varying weights.

Television channels covering the test centres in various locations were full of candidates bemoaning this departure from the old model, on which they had based their preparation. Many appeared to see it as a betrayal of sorts.

This reaction among potential managers, while understandable, should also cause some concern to those who think about the future of corporate India. Management these days is all about innovation, unconventional and out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to deal with surprises.

If these are the abilities that make a good manager, then it is entirely justifiable for the elite business schools in the country to test these abilities among their applicants.

Having controlled for the level of difficulty, asking candidates to prioritise the questions they would attempt is surely a good way to test their skills to quickly evaluate the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, keeping their skills and resources in mind. This is what they will be required to do on a routine basis in the workplace, anyway.

But, the typical reaction of candidates showed little appreciation of this. For most, it was an exam which they had prepared for through repetitive solutions of model papers, trying to shave the last second off their timing, like a champion athlete or swimmer""slaves to the predictability.

While this kind of approach and preparation may have got them high scores in the test and increased their probabilities of admission to the IIMs or the other schools, it surely does not bode well for their future employers.

An uncertain and turbulent business environment, throwing up new challenges every day, does not reward an aptitude to becoming more efficient at narrowly defined tasks.

The more predictable and standardised the entrance test becomes, the greater the disconnect between the kind of people doing well in it and the kind of people employers want.

There clearly is a problem of numbers, of course. There are simply too many people applying, for a full evaluation of individual talents to be carried out.

But, within that constraint, the occasional surprise and new twist in an otherwise routine process will go some way towards improving the quality of selection. All credit to the designers of the CAT, then, for having introduced a new and valuable filter into the screening process.