New Delhi : Second Meeting - IFCCI Higher Education Committee

We were happy to introduce a few new members including some Engineering Schools and more Indian Institutions. The new members that were present shared their expectations from the Committee which looked in line with our mission (to get close to corporate world in an effort of providing more opportunities for our alumni, to act as a recognised body to push initiatives towards Third parties, to promote entrepreneurial opportunities…), a mention on how to enhance more collaboration between French and Indian institutions was added.

The objective of the 2nd meeting was to share a roadmap for the next 6 months:

1. Meeting with Institut Français (French Embassy) for Representatives of French universities on July 5th 
 
The Institut Français in India and Campus France have invited the representatives in India of the French institutions for a meeting on how to work further together. As not all members will be able to attend, we are proposing to act as their representative on that occasion.  
We would be happy to raise the points and suggestions you may have to them under the name of the committee.  

For the Indian institutions, we believe it could be an occasion also to lobby for an ease to visa for the French students. If you are interested in this initiative, kindly send us your suggestions by mail by Tuesday 26th June. We would then compile them and write a common letter. 
Representatives of French institutions who have not received an invitation: please email Emilia Cartier, attaché for university cooperation coordinating the meeting, at eca@infindia.in  

2. Meeting HR Committee September 
 
We are looking at a common date with the HR committee to join their event. It would be a first occasion to explore opportunities to collaborate with them; therefore we have to be focused while still giving a chance to all of our members to get visibility.  

Agenda : we will make a 15/20 min presentation of the strength of our combined alumni network, the advantages of welcoming students exposed to France during their studies and to present a few   services we would like to put in place : newsletter (cf following point), speed networking event.This should be followed by a series of question to the HR committee in order to assess their challenges and other opportunities to collaborate. Finally, we should use the remaining time for simple networking time open to all.  

The structure of this first meeting would not allow for every Institution to present themselves, therefore we would like to prepare a presentation presenting each member that would be sent to the all HR committee (presently 40/50 companies). It should both raise more interest from them in meeting us, but also will help providing a sense of scale. 

Please find enclosed the template we are thinking of. We will share also with you the presentation we are looking in setting up. 

We understood that a lot is expected from the interaction with the HR community. But we propose to go step by step. We also want to have similar interactions with other committees (Finance, Start up, Retail…). 

3. IFCCI Alumni Newsletter  
 
The IFCCI team is proposing a new service to help our alumni.  For middle level and senior level alumni who would be looking for a change, they are offering to send masked profiles regularly to the HR committee. You will find below link of the proposed form. For this to be working, we would need everyone in the group to promote the service to your alumni network.  

4. Speed Networking event in November/December  
 
This is another great initiative proposed by IFCCI, which we will pitch to the HR Heads of IFCCI member Companies and that would require our involvement to get adequate applications. Unlike a job fair, the event would involve inviting only targeted profiles among our alumni and give them an opportunity to have 10 min sessions with HR Heads/Managers. Sapna explained that there’s a keen interest from HR.

We don’t necessarily need to set up job fairs for our more junior alumni as Campus France is already planning such events and we are welcome to join in.

In order to get the HR heads even more interested, we can also add some content in the first part of the event: for example testimonials of employers who have hired international profiles, a round table with Alumni who explain what they can bring to an Indian company after their experience abroad, a round table with Indian and French Alumni, or another round table about Indian and French HR of companies in India with Indian and French Alumni debating about how to value better diversity within corporates in India. 

5. Organisation of physical meetings of the committee on the campus of one of our members in September  
 
We are very grateful that some of our members offered for the committee to meet on their premises. As some Institutions are based in France, we thought we could organise such meetings during the admission tours organised around the end of September and February each year. 
 
The Model could be: a small presentation to the campus student about studies in France and a 1 hour opportunity for French schools to interact with the students, followed or preceded by a workshop for all members on a topic.  

As promotion of entrepreneurship opportunities for our alumni is among our objectives, we thought we could do this first session on that topic with a goal of proposing a roadmap for concrete actions. We are considering the 28th September either morning in Bangalore or afternoon in Mumbai to have this first meeting. We will contact the interested host institutions soon to finalise the topic. 

To make the most of the session, we would need to discuss the form of the discussion with the volunteers before the time.  

6. General Assembly of IFCCI on 21st September In Mumbai 
 
The IFCCI team has offered to welcome limited number of our alumni at preferred rates which we would have to nominate. Details will be shared with you once fully finalised. 

7. Press relations 
 
We would like to start approaching specialised medias in order to ensure a maximum HR professionals know about us, about the quality of our institutions and the strength of being in touch with our alumni. We request our members to share contacts of journalists if you have for a first encounter. We would have a collective approach of course on this matter.  

8. Gala  
 
We would like to propose our alumni a joint event which should be an exciting moment allowing them networking among peers but also exciting them to promote their institution of origin throughout. A format of gala is proposed but we should follow up on this idea to design the effective format. 

9. Relations with other IFCCI committees  
 
We are starting to contact the other committees and would love to have volunteers to help in bridging us to them.

10. An exploration tour for Indian universities to France A new idea has been also raised during the call

The Indian institutions would like us to approach the French embassy in order to organise an exploration tour for member institutions in France, in order to offer opportunities of collaboration. It could also help in allowing promotion of India to French students. We believe it could be raised on 5th July to Institut Français first. A joint letter would help in reaching out to the Embassy. 

We thank you very much again for your enthusiasm and are looking forward to your participation in the follow up actions