easy come...easy go...

screams …Crunch!!!...Splinter… …sounds of a horrific car crash…or maybe my first tryst with placements at ISB! J actually… wasn’t that bad. It was Monday morning 11.15am…first day of term 7 and I, like any ‘dutiful’ student..was in my first class of the day...Advertising, listening to the prof talk about SBI’s slogan and why it indicates a lack of confidence…and my phone lights up (its always on silent in class…yeah..am smug abt it too). Sms from S…”Congrats and best of luck”. I reply asking “what the hell for?”. A couple more cryptic/nonsensical messages later am told was shortlisted for EDS. My response? “was everyone who applied. Shortlisted?” honest…with the mention of the dreaded 4 letter word…you guessed it…CGPA…had not looked at the application exercise as anything more than a means to get my resume on track.

But now what? Had to report for the ppt at 3pm. Cud start by going to the company website to see what they’re about J spent the next couple of hours hunting for my ties…getting my suit ironed…and trying to memorize what EDS was an abbreviation for. 29 shortlisted…ppt was delayed by 2 hours by which time they’d decided to expand the shortlist to some 60 odd, apparently, more roles had been added at the last moment. 45min talk by their VP…’Max’ following which we had to give 5 min schpiels about ourselves..my number was 32. did the fastest math of my life…32 X 5 = 160 means a couple of hours easy for my turn right? Wrong!. Spent the next hour or so in the lrc thinking abt what I’d say and went back to ac2 to find it was now #37 and that now I’d have to wait till the end! What the ****! Turned out many others had followed the same mathematical model as I had and spent the next hour and half twiddling thumbs till the panel decided to break for dinner. In the break they announce a short-list of 15 out of the 30 odd who’d presented. Thought..great! 50% gives me a fair chance…am first up after dinner. Finish mine at abt 10..not too bad…got them to chuckle at some of the funny stuff I’d added…or so I thought…until the final list was announced J 2 out of the 25 to present after dinner!

Still dunno how that made sense…but what the heck…was an experience…and certainly served to bring home the fact that placement season is well and truly here! (puts on fake devil-may-care expression and thinks to self…”grrr…the next post related to placements better be different!”) J