Sunday, February 25, 2007

Term 8 starts tomorrow

I don't know in what state of mind I decided to take up 4 courses on a single day in Term 8. This term is supposedly the term where no student talks about classes, coursework and grades. They don't come to class. The whole batch makes sure that they use the "you can miss 2 classes per course" policy. And here I am, with 4 classes, 8 hours of class on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on the contrary, yippee hoo, no class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So my weekend starts on Wednesday evening. So, there is always a better side. I just have to keep waiting for Wednesday evening every week.

The last 5 days have been so tiring. I was at the Control Desk of the placement cell all day and helping out with the placement process. Mixed emotions were flowing through groups of people. Some of them were frustrated that the shortlists weren't justified. Some were unhappy about offers, well most of them were. Especially the kids from the IT Industry with 2-3 years of experience. They have this feeling that they are the nations next best managers. You must see the kind of expectations they have about their salaries. Its effin crazy and baseless. Finally they had to settle for something they weren't too happy about, but thats the reality. If they hadn't done that, they would be jobless.

All said and done, as of Friday, I think we had less than 2% of the batch that had not been placed. I haven't been to the placement office today. I am quite sure that the remaining would have got placed in the last two days. Its just amazing to see that 400+ students have been placed in the last 5 days. I truly appreciate the efforts of some of my friends in the current batch. They stayed around. They tracked all the people who were getting dinged and tried to push their resumes to other recruiters. This way, they ensured that everyone had one offer atleast.

Anecdotes to make you smile before I write something else. During one of the interviews, the recruiter gives the offer letter and asks the candidate to write a salary figure on her own. She writes 15 Lacs. Then he says - "Our minimum offer is 20 lacs and I hope you will write a figure above that". Same recruiter makes another offer of 20 to another person. The candidate is not sure whether to sign or not. Within few minutes the offer goes up to 25. The candidate is shocked. He leaves the room asking for a break. Comes back within 5 minutes and still says that he is undecided. Recruiter immediately says 30. Candidate is literally dumbstruck and runs out frantically.

A new BPO that is setting up operations in the north recruits for its whole team in ISB starting from the directors in the top management. One guy got the job for one of the director roles bang on day one. And on day 5, he declined the offer as he wasn't too sure whether he was making the right decision. The company's CEO calls up the placement director in ISB in the next hour and immediately asks whether he can get a replacement director as he cannot start the company without these guys. Howzaaat?

During the last two days of placements, there were more recruiters on campus than the number of students. We were literally spamming the whole batch asking students to participate in the placement process. People had just taken off to Goa and other places. Yesterday, we had 10 students who were interviewing with all the firms on campus. So the recruiters were actually waiting for students to come and meet them. I know its disheartening and not a good practice to do this, but what can we do. Maybe this is a cue for the next year students to think about.

How to keep the last day recruiters happy? This might be one of the challenges that you can try to address.

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