Aadi Ant Aarambh - Placement @ ISB

The start, the end and the new beginning - each a thrill, each a trial and each a prize.

It's the forty-sixth week at ISB now, and there remain five more before graduation. Let's start looking at a few things at ISB in backward slow motion.

Placements

One blessed week, when four hundred careers were sought after. Into the magical hat, each thrust his hand and pulled out a rabbit with a hue ranging from snowy white to dusty grey. It all started with a big bash of interviews of the MBAs by MBA (Mckinsey, BCG, ATKearney) on day 0, when months (weeks in my case) of case intervew preparation was brought to the altar and commanded to do the 4-beat jig of Define, Structure, Solve, Synthesize one last time. Well, I've always had two left feet when it comes to dancing, no Ash... so I fidgeted and faltered through the whole process. No worries though, what I've got is worth it's weight in gold... umm, which is not much gold, but is enough for life. For many fellow aspirants, the dream did materialize and as for the firms themselves, it was a bumper harvest as our best were handpicked and will soon be jet setting across the world carrying the ISB brand neat and high with them. Rock on, guys!

There are close to 200 companies visiting campus this season. Two hundred?!! ejaculated amazed a few friends back at Baroda, and struggled a bit to say the next word which was Wow. On campus, though, that doesn't mean a thing. We can't just take ANY job, we need what we want. But, were we able to wait for the right one? Not many of us, I hazard. The pressure was maybe telling on many a resolve to wait out for the dream company/sector/industry. Umm... TWI (Thomas Weisel) is today and I have signed out of the placement process. Surely not dream company... but dream industry?

The process, then.

1. You register at the placement website and receive an id and a password
2. As recruiter companies are bowled over by ISB Business Development team or by themselves, they register for placement
3. PPT's happen throughout the month of January, upto 4/5 a day, where the hallowed firms brag and the less shiny ones pitch
4. You pick a set that you find matches your capabilities, or aspirations, or rarely both, and apply online. Some of them also have a tedium of form-fillings. Others just have these:

• The Resume: A contorted 'activized' picture of your professional life, where you struggle to not lose the prominence of what you did in those relevant necessary words.
• The EoI: Expression of Interest... or for us career-switchers, an Endeavour to Overshadow Incompatibility. I tried hajaar and one creative bursts in those EoI paragraphs. I knew they don't matter much, but I felt good about making those 3 paragraphs as interesting as I could, possibly just in the hope that some cute HR in some company would read it, like it and note down the phone number at the top.

1. Come the D-Day, and you scurry to the magic hats to pull out your rabbits.
2. Shortlists and Interviews are often very much inter-twined almost as close together as a fresh couple on lonesome place besides a lake. You get one night to prepare... I got half a night for one of my fav companies.
3. After you have managed to impress and prove that you had really 'pioneered the new perspective on' whatever technology, you get a 'Letter of Intent'
4. LoI converts to offers the same or next day (a maximum of two offers across days, unlimited on the same day)...
5. An excessively formal, but quite visibly self-conscious placement team member congratulates you.
6. You pick your choice within the stipulated time (1-x days), sign at the bottom of the form and make a dotted line beneath if you wish.
   
   Umm... people who excel in the end are mostly people who have focus or who have ma fate. I had a little of both. "I accept the offer and am willing to opt out of the placement process."