To ease the load on faculty members taking admission interviews for the post-graduate programme (PGP), the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), for the first time, will include alumni members as part of the interview panel.

IIM-B has shortlisted 1,548 candidates this year for an intake of 375 students.

Under the strategy, the interviewing panel will comprise two faculty members and one alumnus, as opposed to two faculty members in the previous years. Around 300 alumni members are learnt to have confirmed their participation. The interviews would be conducted from March 18 to April 7.

Admission interviews take around 100 hours of faculty time each year, which may also require travelling to centres in other cities.

The initiative is being seen as an experiment to bring in professionals who could help ease the pressure and also create an academia-industry balance in the interview panel. "We are experimenting with two faculty members and one alumnus. Based on the response this year, we may look at one faculty member and one alumnus for the interview panel next year," said Subhashish Gupta, chairperson of admissions for IIM-B. Around 40 faculty members will be part of the interview process this year.

Sanjaya Kumar Gupta, a PGP graduate from IIM-B in 1992, wished his learning from the industry could be of assistance to his alma mater. This year, Gupta and his fellow alumni members have the opportunity to do that. The founder director of Spectrum Consultants, Gupta says the involvement of alumni members would give them the opportunity to interact with the institute and use their industry knowledge to ensure selection of a dynamic group of students.

The move is the brainchild of IIM-B's alumni association, which had sent out a mail to its nearly 8,500-strong members inviting them to be part of the admission interviews in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

The criteria for applying, according to Rakesh Godhwani, head of IIM-B alumni association, is minimum seven years of work experience, have to be resident of cities listed above and should be able to devote a day for the effort.