Look at my blog's last post! Was written almost five months back. Are you surprised? Kind of right? I am also surprised, as if I had left an important thing of my life for the past months. Today I got a chance out of my non busy schedule to write a post for my blog and for my blog followers (flaunting as if I have many followers). Good to see me back, I know you are thinking this only. Let us see what have I got to write today ,,, ummm,, have not thought of any thing though. Ok lets start with some thing interesting, how bout few facts about what has been happening around me for the past few months?
December: We urged our director to bring in the roll in process for the placement of the students. Our Image in the industry will dissolve (How oblivion he is about the image thing, even IIPM would be more popular a choice among MBA aspirants than ours).Has any one thought of hiring a consultant? We can have that option if required, don’t worry every one will get placed. And please for God’s sake, don’t compare us with IIMs or the XLs.
Make sure you behave properly else I will leave the class and just walk away.
January: placements started. Placement week saw 3 companies I guess coz of what we call as a slow down of the Indian economy and a recession in some of world’s biggest economies. I wonder how our fate is so not dependent on us. Some people in the west (USA) wanted to make more money out of the booming real estate business and then they thought of minting money which led to the subprime crisis and so on. Wow! Many banks and financial institutions minted money and got bankrupt. No one would have even thought of Lehman vanishing from this earth but the fact is there is no company named Lehman Brothers now. We in India are said to be still better off with Australia getting the least hit by the upheaval of the various economies of the world. Though less but the wound is still deep. One would never ever forget this year ever in their life especially not an MBA qualified like me for sure. Today it seems so funny to have cleared the CAT and come here just to get annoyed by some one else’s urge to make more money.
January mid: Roll in process got the final acceptance because IIMs or the godfather have also given a green signal to it. Mamta ma’am missed a whole class just to listen ,,,sorry, just to hear our concerns. With no after effects and follow ups. She never followed up with the higher authorities regarding the placement thing after she left the class that day, how could she have done that if the higher authorities were the source of her bread and butter. Placecom had started to have its worst night mares as the days moved ahead un aware of what was going to happen next. People started abusing and fighting with each other and not even the faculty was spared. Some one abusing openly in front of a faculty in the class or some one accusing the other of not disbursing the money made out of the venture started by 18 people of the class. Or even questioning the sanctity of values or belief of the other person. As if it was the silence of the storm which was yet to come which was speaking which actually led the original instincts of the people to show as clear as the rain drop. No one knew what was coming next. One of the placecom member resigned and other took over and yet another one who was the strongest contender of all got rejected by the higher authorities (he actually didn’t deserve to be a placecom, didn’t u see how he always made fun of the way the new members were working). It was a tough time for the new members. The old members did show in class a list of around 15-16 companies which were to come to campus (of which only SBI Life got converted). Placement week ended with no pomp and show. Unlike the last years placement, which ended in one day this time only one member of our team got thru during the placement week.
February: NGO visit started. Not many were eager to carry on with the internship but it was good for one reason. Our minds got diverted for some time from the bad thoughts of not getting placed. NGO visits were fun though. February ended with little companies showing their face to the FUTURE HR MANAGERS at the campus.
March: April: Some 12-13 companies came for the batch of 36 of so called top ten ranked college. On persistent efforts of the students a consultant was hired (5 months after FORE hired and around 3 months after IMT hired, just another information: IMT had hired 3 consultants to get its students placed long long ago). In the mean while frustration level of students not getting placed started to rise. I personally sat in front of my lap top every day and searched for companies well known and unknown and just uploaded my CV. Sent my CV through e-mail to more than 100 consultants, though no one ever came back to me with a job neither did the consultant hired by our college to whom 2 lakh Rs were already paid.
The hostel started to look like a haunted place with zombies moving all around the campus terrorizing every one and also getting terrorized them selves with one thing WHAT IF I DON’T GET PLACED? It had been the best time for the companies who were hiring. They did what ever it took for them to choose the right fit. They did every thing which they could not do the last year, as if taking out their frustration on the poor MBAs. Take for example Make my Trip took 5-6 inter views in their office and guess what, they did not select any one. One contender fought for 1 hour 40 minutes in one of the interview but Make My Trip was not impressed. Vedanta, HSBC Life insurance, BOA etc gave a presentation and never turned up. Some of the top companies that came to campus were of the likes of Prabhudas Lila Dhar India and Adarsh Group. While PDLD selected one student in January in May it did not finally gave the offer letter to him, I guess they might have gone to a better college to hire another one after ruining the future of the student whom they selected. Adarsh Group on the other hand had been very kind by selecting 3 students from our batch. Their was only one small problem and it was that the company having a turnover of over 300 crore didn’t have enough money to launch the company’s website or get its employees a visiting card or get a land line phone connection or own a company letter head printed 3 pages on which they could have printed the offer letter. Wow! I did not know that such big companies can actually cut cost by such innovative measures. How about job enrichment? The company didn’t clearly knew what will be the job description for the position they were hiring for, so in real sense the selected person was supposed to do any thing the boss wanted letting in the concept of job enrichment in the company. Bata called some 3 people in their company head quarters in Gurgaon and faked the whole interview by asking silly questions. Later after a few weeks the director HR of the company got enlightenment that our college was one of the top 10 B-School so he again called another set of students to interview. Considering that it is a strategic decision he has not yet disclosed the results for the past one month and it seems that he might disclose it the next year as it is highly confidential.Same was the case with JK Group. Jindal steels got the shock of their life when one of our batchmates personally called the HR department to tell that his colleg's director has not forwarded his CV to them and that he wanted to attend the interview being an eligible mechanical engineer (This person nevr thought that a company which was offering over 9 lakh package might not like his way of getting the interview call, how bout the other mechanical engineers in our batch who were then equally eligible to get a call but were not called for inter view as it was our director who had sent 3-4 selected CVs for the profile). Finally Jindal did not take any one from our college.
PGDM-HR final exams got over. It was time for us to start a long waiting journey to eternity with no clear picture in mind as to which company was coming in the next week or even the next day. I had one of my longest and most dreaded summers of my life. Every day I came back to my same bed and same room and ate at same Pandey Ji’s shop/canteen. Didn’t felt like going home either as if I had done a crime by not getting placed. Most of the hostel was an empty vessel and the best thing we could do was to sit in a group of 2-3 people and talk on diverse topics like placement, Amrish, Anup’s foreign visit to Bhutan in times of recession, Director’s strong steps to get companies on campus and finally again on placements. It was like our mind got nauseated every time by talking about it and we actually didn’t have any thing but placements to talk about. In weeks or even at times after a month we got news of some one getting placed at a top package of 4 or 5 lakh wooo! What a nice package I thought. Last year our seniors did not let TCS recruit from our campus for a very basic reason. The branded Tata Company was acting foolish u see, it was offering 4.75 lakh package to the students and our seniors were adamant like small kids on not letting such awful companies who were offering less than 5 to come on campus. We had been very modest in our approach though, all through out the placement process. We let all the companies offering less than 5 for our placement. TCS did not turn up this time.
Psychological pressure was building in my mind as the month of June was coming nearer and nearer. The month in which our super juniors were to join the college.
May: I got placed in Krishna Maruti as MT HR at 3 lakh. It was a grand relief I had ever had. Just a day before Anshuman and Roopal were wishing me good luck and assuring me that I will surely get thru. Roopal had been a great support through out my stay here. I hugged her (and thanked her for it in my mind) as I got the news. I might be acting selfish but I wish she wouldn’t have got through Adarsh, she deserves way better a job than the one being offered by the no website company. Still 10 people are yet to be placed and the day after tomorrow is our Convocation. Many students will not be able to attend the convocation I guess, not because they will not be able to make it to the campus but because they will not have enough courage to face the reality that they are graduating form a top B School with out a job, for which they got 90+ %ile in CAT and for which many studied day and night to get thru and for which many took loans of lakhs of rupees to pay for the tuition fee and for which they knew if they will get in then it will make their rest of the life beautiful.
I look at the brighter side at present just because today I have a job, not every one can do that. I saw the hidden tears in Saurabh Bansal’s eyes who got thru PDLD in Jan and missed every good opportunity till May until the company said no to him. He was also selected for Adarsh which again seems to be saying no to the students now. 30 % of my batch is yet to be placed, but I am sure that soon it will reduce to zero. Hope that the journey which started smoothly ends smoothly. May God bless the inner conscience of the companies who have been playing with the future of some of the brightest students in the filed of business management. May God also bless Anup so that his foreign trip is successful and God bless Amrish for making a lot of false commitments and God bless the director for his efforts to ask Amrish in every meeting with the students about the number of companies that have already come on campus and also on asking during the meeting the names of the companies and also the number of students who are yet to be placed.
Signing off with a PS: I never knew how life can take turns on straight roads which seem so smooth. As far as I am concerned I think a new set of turns are now waiting for me starting form 1st of June. I just pray to God that I and my friends may constantly get the vision and inspiration to deal with every turn of this life, which in fact is very short. I wish all my friends be around me all the time which I know is very difficult. But I do wish for that un granted wish, you never know when a wish might come true. Gn.
