Saturday, February 14, 2009

Summers at IIMB - as I saw it

“I declare the placement process to be closed”, it was magical when Prof. Mukherjee announced this. IIMB managed to place the entire batch in just 4.5 days.
Day ‘ -4’. I am preparing with all I could for my only “Day 0” call.
Day ‘-2’, I appear for the first telephonic interview.
Day ‘-1’, I appear for the final telephonic interview….and the wait for the “Result” starts.
Day 0: The day almost 2/3rd of the batch is waiting for. All the much desired Consults and I Banks visit the campus. The news from other IIMs was not positive, but IIMB remains an exception. The companies were already stunned by the resumes and commented that the resumes of IIMB put even the foreign B-Schools to shame. Day 0 proved to be all good; of course we can’t compare with last year.
For me, I was waiting for the Result throughout the day but to no avail. Meanwhile, many friends got placed in great I Banks and Consults. Some volunteered to help the placement process while rest preferred to provide support to their friends.
This was all I had written the next day the placements got over. Probably I meant something very important in the last line, probably not.

Anyways.

I experienced every possible emotion I could imagine in those four days. There were times of hope and the next moment an utter dejection. The problem is not with the companies or the process, the problem lies with the expectations, which don’t always meet.
If one doesn’t get placed on Day 0, the chances of dragging to Day 2/3/4 are all equal. All those 3 days I kept waiting for the result of Result which I thought will be a positive one. Sadly, I never got to know the Result. However, I got an average offer from a Financial Engineering co., which I thought was pretty decent as it involved traveling to Singapore and Switzerland/Malaysia. Incidentally, the result of Result was out after I had signed out from the process, so I never got to know whether I successfully convinced the Swede.
To say it was a great experience to learn sounds a bit clichéd. However, been through this, it was very tough to handle. As more and more people get the offers, one is bound to feel impatient. I discovered many unknown people may help you when you least expect them to. On the contrary, as I experienced, many of my thought-to-be friends didn’t talk to me even once in those 4 days. Life, as they say, is like that only. Some things you have to do alone, you may get some support if you lucky enough. At that instant I remembered what my friend from IITD who went to IIMC once said: “The kind of friendship developed in IITs is not possible in IIMs”. He may have ignored the time factor, but I, for some reason, couldn’t reject the possibility.
All in all, a very tiring process, with a flurry of extreme emotions.
I was glad – it ended on a reasonably happy note.

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